Don't Look Under the Bed
by Twisted Flame
Summary: Anyone who tells you to clean under your bed isn't just nagging, as the Charmed Ones find out to their cost. Leo and Chris clash over the sisters' disappearance, but can they work together in order to restore the Power of Three?
1. Prologue

_**Anything you see here that's salient from the world of 'Charmed' is the property of the WB, Brad Kern, Spelling Television and all of the other crazy people who roll across the screen at the beginning at end of the episodes. No infringement is intended and any resemblance to anyone – living or dead – is entirely coincidental.**_

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Phoebe tightened the backing of her left earring, squinting in her mirror on the vanity table. She was sitting on the edge of the stool, concentrating on making moves contrary to those displayed in the mirror. The witch had gone for more-conservative-than-her-usual-style studs today, but she had managed to lose the back of the right one somehow, and had no idea where it was. Her earring was going to fall out unless she found it soon… Laying the small diamond on the surface she frowned at her now uneven reflection and mused for a while as she unfastened the left one too. She then got up and exited into the upper hallway.

She clucked her tongue in thought, pausing for a second. She had already finger-tip searched the entirety of her bedroom rug, and she had been in Paige's room this morning 'borrowing' this new lipstick she'd seen her sister sporting. Maybe the backing fell off there. She knocked on Paige's door before opening, but the room was empty and still except for the curtain fluttering slightly in the breeze from the open window.

She did a quick sweep of the room - noticing that her 'borrowing' of Paige's lipstick was justified as there was a pair of her own shoes tucked under a chair that she had missed when she was in here this morning – and by chance saw the tiny back glinting, nearly hidden under Paige's bed.

She thought she felt her hand tingle as she reached under to get it, but that was probably just the comforter's tassels, she reasoned.

And then, with a shriek and a chunky, high-heeled sandal thudding to the rug she was gone.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

"DEMONS!" Paige yelled, jumping to her feet. "Coffee table!" she yelled, and the piece of furniture orbed through the sunroom doors and on top of the group of demons. The magazines that used to reside on it fell to the floor with several splats and as Piper ran into the parlour from the dining room waving her hands she skidded on a particularly glossy one depicting some kind of celebrity scandal or the other and fell on her butt.

The three demons started to unpick themselves from the remains of the coffee table as Piper accepted a hand up with a glare at Paige. She flicked her hands out, but the demons were only mildly affected, staggering backwards.

"CHRIS!" Piper hollered at the ceiling as Paige continued to direct any kind of weapon she could see at the demons. Piper winced inwardly as wood splintered and glass shattered around her.

With a point of its finger, the demon blasted a swaddling of orbing lights out of the air with a stream of fire, dissipating them and whatever they were carrying. Paige blinked, momentarily shocked and stopping her barrage for a split second too long.

Suddenly the air was filled with the narrow streams of fire – only about twice or three times as thick as an arrow and just about as long - and Paige pulled Piper down, sincerely wishing she hadn't orbed the coffee table at the demon, because it would now at least have offered some form of cover.

"Couch!" she squeaked as a line of the bolts surged towards them. The couch orbed in front of them on top of the mess of magazines and a shattered pot plant. Acrid smoke coiled from the sofa as it singed and Piper thanked God that they had had the sense to by something fireproofed. Although to be honest they were hardly going to buy something that would spontaneously combust at the first sign of a spark, not in this house.

"Where the hell is Phoebe?" Piper growled, popping her head up to try and freeze the scene. The demons didn't freeze either and she shrieked, throwing herself onto her side, narrowly avoiding landing on baby Chris in her pregnant stomach. The stream of fire aimed at her shattered a vase of flowers on the marble-topped table behind her. Water gushed all over the floor as Piper yelled yet again for her missing sister, then her son.

"Mom, what-" Chris had appeared in the doorway of the conservatory and was immediately blasted in the back and blown face first onto the couch where he lay unmoving.

In a cloud of orbs the white wicker couch rose into the air from behind the demons and landed on them, giving Paige time to vault the parlour's couch and yank the large sliding doors of the conservatory closed, using a lamp's flex to tie the catch in place. The door shook violently and a wisp of smoke coiled through the gap.

The double doors to her left just shattered completely, knocking her to the floor in a barrage of splintered wood and glass shards. Grunting she crawled army-style, embedding glass in her elbows, to the couch where she yelled for Piper to take Chris's arm while she grabbed his leg. As a last-ditch attempt she orbed glass at the demon, but it smoked out and she concentrated on orbing the party of three out of the parlour as the demon rematerialized and walked through the door-less doorway with its partners, crunching on debris.

"Phoebe!" Piper yelled as the orbing lights faded around her, placing her in the attic. "PHOEBE!" She crossed to the door, enunciated both syllables angrily and ventured out onto the landing.

"Piper, where are you going?" Paige asked, flipping frantically through the book of shadows and keeping an eye on her stirring nephew, who was lying on the floor moaning.

"I've got to find Phoebe! Keep looking!"

Paige was about to protest further but Piper was already descending into the shadows of the Manor's upper hallway.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

Piper snuck along the landing as much as a pregnant woman could sneak, wincing as she heard the sounds of the ground floor being completely trashed. A floorboard squeaked underneath her and she hurried on, hissing her sister's name.

"Phoebe! Get your ass out here right-" The three demons smoked in in front of her and she raised her hands, blasting them all backwards down the hall as she hurried for Phoebe's bedroom. The door was ajar and Piper burst through, locking it behind her and turning, expecting to see Phoebe meditating or listening to music or maybe even working, but the room was empty.

"Crap," Piper said, leaning against the door which shook against some kind of onslaught, probably fiery, that would be leaving scorch marks on the wood. "PAIGE!" She yelled to the ceiling, loud enough for her half-sister to not even need her whitelighter senses.

The three demons smoked in again and fired at her all at the same time. She ducked and the door was obliterated in a rain of smouldering splinters. She scrambled backwards, just in time to see Chris running down the stairs and flinging out his arm, vanquishing a demon with its own weapon.

"Run!" He commanded, dragging his mother up without allowing her dignity under the armpits and giving her a push towards the attic. Over his head, a light fitting on the wall exploded and he hit the deck, feeling the air leave his lungs. He made a motion with two fingers and a splinter of wood rammed itself through another demon's stomach, vanquishing it.

Piper, torn between saving herself and Chris's foetus or the adult version sprawled across the wreckage strewn floor eventually ran back towards the attic stairs, blasting the remaining demon backwards before disappearing around the corner. As she tried her best to run up the attic stairs she was glad she'd had Leo orb Wyatt to Magic School that day. It was best that he wasn't here right now. She finally burst into the attic, where Paige stuffed a piece of paper with a vanquishing spell written on it into her hand.

"Where's Chris?"

"Here," the witch-whitelighter said, taking the stairs two at a time. He stopped, panting, a graze bleeding freely on his cheek. "Couldn't… kill him…" He gasped, before swallowing and straightening up. "Got a spell?"

"I couldn't find Phoebe," Piper fretted, just as Paige was blown clean across the room into a bookshelf. Piper opened her mouth to say the spell but with pinpoint accuracy the demon incinerated the piece of paper before throwing a jet of fire at Piper herself. Chris directed it back at the demon, which smoked out, and the firestream fizzled out on the doorframe.

Paige dragged herself up from the floor just in time to yell out a warning to Chris, who turned quick enough so that the fire only grazed his side. The stream, however, headed straight for Piper. Paige orbed a fallen book from beside her into the path and the two collided, just as Piper knocked the demon on its ass again with her power.

"_Fiery demon in my presence,_

_Let your element be your riddance!"_

Paige dropped back to the floor then just as the demon erupted into flames and exploded.

"Just for the record?" Chris said, "I am not on cleanup duty."

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

**Okay, there it is folks. This is a trial – the review button is there. I could be snotty and say that I don't intend to update ever again if I don't get enough reviews, but I know I'll come crawling back, so do as you please, heh.**

**Okay, for those of you that know me already and are wondering why the hell I'm writing mindless crap instead of posting Chapter 9, it's because Chapter 9 is threatening to become another telephone directory, and I'm trying to edit it down, but all I've done is edit it up. Oy. This is completely unrelated and without my original characters, but I hope just as enjoyable.**

**Did I mention where to find the review button?**

_**Twisted Flame**_


	2. Chapter 1

**I never actually thought about a timeline for this… I just wrote it, heh. I'm making it up as I go along, so please bear with me.**

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Piper paced with the cordless phone glued to her ear, constantly ringing Phoebe's cell phone. She stabbed the disconnect button, pursed her lips and rubbed a hand over her eyes. Where was Phoebe? She'd called her sister's office, and they had said that they would call when she came in, and ever since she'd been trying her cell. She got halfway through dialling again before remembering that this new phone had redial, but slammed the phone back down on its base anyway and strode through the dining room, stepping over one of the chairs.

The table had been overturned and all of the chairs thrown against the wall. One had shattered the mirror above the fireplace. Piper sighed, realizing that there was no way she was going to heave the table over by herself and settled for putting the chairs back in place, all except the one at the head of the table, which was missing a leg. She leant it against the sideboard and put the leg on the cushioned seat before turning to look elsewhere. Everything else looked fine, she thought, as she pushed all of her weight against the sideboard to straighten it and righted the knocked-over candlesticks.

The sunroom wasn't in too bad a state either, save for the sweeping that needed to be done from all of Paige's projectiles. She bent at the waist and winced, feeling Chris give her a kidney shot. She stayed bent for a second before picking up the scattered cushions, plumping them, and putting them back on their respective chairs and couches.

She eyed the shattered double doors to the parlour and frowned, just as an end table came whizzing past. She blinked and tried to get through the door, but the lamp that used to be on said end table came flying past as well and she was forced to step back. Looking left and right as if she were crossing a busy street, she stepped into the room and nearly fell over in shock.

The parlour had been transformed into some wild and wacky _Fantasia_ scene. Furniture and debris were swirling through the air in mini orb-light tornadoes, crashing into a trashcan or coming to rest in its rightful place.

Other objects were moving in great long lines of their own accord, and Piper was yet again reminded of another childhood movie – this time _The Sword in the Stone -_ in particular the scene in which Merlin was packing.

Ducking under a airborne broken picture frame she managed to weave her way to the centre of the room and collapsed on the couch, which gave her a good enough view of her son and half-sister orchestrating the cleanup. She shrieked as fallen magazines soared towards her head, disappearing in orbs just as they were about to hit her.

Okay, that was _it_. They hadn't even noticed her, and it looked like they were actually having fun breaking the basic no-personal gain rules. They were even fighting over pieces of debris, and when Grams's Tiffany lamp – somehow unbroken which meant she would be spared her grandmother's wrath of her next spectral visit – switched from orbing to flying five times over she snapped.

"STOP!" She yelled suddenly, jumping up. Shards dropped themselves on their way to the trashcan and the lamp dropped to the floor, shattering before she could even think about freezing it. "No…"

"Mom, hey," Chris said, blinking as his mother fought to free herself from the depths of the couch.

"Busted," Paige admitted, pulling a face and putting her hands behind her back. "Any luck with finding Phoebe?"

"No…" Piper was momentarily thrown. "But don't change the subject, missy. Am I the only one that even _thinks_ about personal gain anymore?" She turned to Chris. "And I thought you said you weren't on cleanup duty?"

"Well, we got talking and seeing as we're both telekinetic and hate cleaning up destruction…" Paige started, but saw Piper's nostrils flare. "Oh, lighten up. It was a little bit of magical cleaning. I'm sure the Powers That Be won't need a psychiatrist to get over it," Paige said, rolling her eyes and waving her hand dismissively.

"And what if they do, huh? Didja think about that before you went all Mickey Mouse on the place? Huh?"

"Mickey Mouse?" Chris echoed, confused.

"You don't know who Mickey Mouse is?" Paige said, in apparent shock. "Shame on you, Piper. Not showing the kid any Disney."

"I know who Mickey Mouse is," Chris said, closing his eyes momentarily against the ridiculous nature of the conversation. "I just…" he caught his mother's murderous look as they threatened to get off topic again. "I just gotta go and find out who sent those demons. Later."

His orbing lights disappeared into the floor, deaf to Piper's protests. She turned her gaze on Paige, but her half-sister made a couple of thinking noises, looked as if she'd had an epiphany, said that she was going to look for Phoebe and broke into blue lights which disappeared through the ceiling.

"Doesn't anyone use the door anymore?" Piper called angrily to the ceiling, but got no reply from the plaster. Maybe it didn't know. Silently fuming she pulled herself up from the couch, nearly falling back down as she slipped – again - on a corner of a magazine poking out from under the couch. A tiny voice was appealing to her exasperation and niggling in the back of her brain, telling her that magic had done a good job so far… She chewed on her bottom lip, putting her hand on her stomach as she contemplated. "You know what, Powers That Be? Screw you." She got halfway through saying a spell from memory when the doorbell rang.

Blinking and looking to the clock on the wall only to find that her foot was actually on one of the hands she let out an exasperated breath as the doorbell chimed again. She threw her hands up in the air. "I'M COMING ALREADY!" She yelled in the direction of the foyer, stalking across the debris to the living room, so she could check the time on the grandfather clock and work out if they were expecting anyone. Her watch didn't fit her anymore – apparently wrists were just as prone to swelling as ankles were during pregnancy. Chris was beginning to owe her a lot.

"Oh, gimme a break…" she whined, half-heatedly stamping her foot onto the pendulum of the clock, which bent to being sort-of flat again. The clock was barely a rectangle scorch mark on the wall now and as the doorbell chimed again she really felt her temper rise and stormed over to the front door and wrenched it open. If this was one of Phoebe or Paige's lovesick boyfriends, so help her…

"Mrs Bernard… Hi…" Piper searched the woman's face for a reason she was standing on her front doormat looking pissed. Oh boy… She squirmed her way half out of the door, keeping it as closed as possible to make sure her neighbour didn't see the mess.

Mrs Bernard was a widow in her late sixties with two grandchildren. Her fading light brown hair bore many streaks of grey in it and she wore a light grey pencil skirt and a cream silk blouse that was ruffled down the front. The pearls on a string around her neck and the glasses dangling at around the height of her breastbone on a chain made her look like some kind of friendly librarian, although Piper new otherwise. This woman had been a schoolteacher and at the last neighbourhood bake sale had succeeded in making Piper feel just as small as one of her pupils. This was quite a feat, seeing as Piper readily admitted to being headstrong. What's more the woman had whipped up a coffee cake that had very nearly rivalled Piper's own, when she knew – _knew –_ that a coffee cake was going to be Piper's contribution. It had taken a lot of Leo's counselling before she was ready to face her without blowing the stupid cake up.

"Can I help you?"

"Emma was disturbed from her nap by the raucous activity going on inside _your_ house," the old woman started, not-so-subtly trying to peer around Piper's shoulder through the crack in the door.

"Heh…" Piper smiled and stepped outside, closing the door behind her and thanking whatever deity was listening that last time Leo has replaced the doors – when _was _that? Had they actually gone a whole six months without needing knew ones? – they had had him install frosted glass panels. "Emma?" She enquired politely, motioning for Mrs Bernard to take a seat on the bench in the porch. She didn't and Piper – tired and pregnant as she was – was damned if she was going to lose out to an old lady and remained standing also.

"My granddaughter," the grandmother replied in clipped tones. "And she was in a bedroom all the way across the street! I don't know what you've got going on in there, and quite frankly I'm not sure I want to know, but you have to keep the noise _down._ Parties are for your nightclub, not your home. This is a residential area, might I add, and this is just not acceptable!

"I hear nothing, _nothing_ from this house but crashes and screaming and thumps and bumps and who knows what else. It's really time you did something about it. I mean, I thought your _grandmother_ was bad. A lady of her age throwing _that_ kind of party, I mean honestly. But you girls… It stops now, Piper, you hear me? This instant!"

Piper wondered when they'd progressed to first-name terms, because she sure as hell hadn't been the one to start it. She didn't even know Mrs Bernard's first name. Part of her was angered at the cheek of the woman to come over and complain, but part of her knew that Mrs Bernard was right. It wasn't that she welcomed the demon attacks and the mess and the noise more than anyone else, but it was bad enough Hell take it out on them, let alone the neighbours.

"Today… That was the worst in a while, Piper…" Mrs Bernard was still talking. Joy. Her lips were moving but the sound just washed over the witch. She found herself idly wondering if Mrs Bernard still had all of her own teeth, because if her suspicions were correct… She had completely drifted off now into a fantasy of freezing her and having Paige call for the woman's dentures when Mrs Bernard snapped her out of it by doubling the volume of her tirade.

The smile on her face must have been inappropriate because Mrs Bernard scowled and the smile dropped off Piper's face like a stone. "I'm sorry, the baby's kicking."

_God, I wish he would kick _you.

"Are you actually going to raise a child in this environment?"

Did she just? Oooh… She did… Piper's jaw dropped. Okay, this was it. No more Mr Nice Woman. Oh, excellent, an oxymoron. Perfect. And who the hell was she talking to?

"Yes, actually, I am. I've already raised one damn good one, thank you very much." Well. Chris. "And when I want your opinion on my family and parenting skills, I will ask you for it. Is that all?"

Mrs Bernard's face hardened. "Well if you really feel like that, then I'll simply tell you to stop that weird boy hanging around. And I'll bid you good day."

She strode away down the steps and tutted as she looked Piper's SUV up and down. She probably thought it polluted the air or something. Actually it took unleaded fuel and had a catalyst converter. So nyah. Oh, so what if she was feeling childish today? It wouldn't be the first time.

The witch standing fuming in the porch had to employ all of her self control not to blow that woman to pieces. How _dare_ she talk about Chris like that? Weird boy. Pfft. As if _she'd_ know what weird was. And anyway, when was the last time Chris had even been outside, rather than poring over a map, or a book, or a book with maps in? As it was her fingers twitched and she blew up a flowerpot accidentally. The tinkling of terracotta shards brought Mrs Bernard's head whipping round and Piper gave a small wave.

"A little bit of advice Mrs Bernard?" She said, smiling sweetly. "If the lace curtains in your windows are blocking the view of our house, then TAKE THEM DOWN," she ended with a snarl, turning on her heel and slamming the door so hard a small pane of the coloured glass fell out. "THIS IS SO NOT MY DAY!" She growled, the red shards just adding to the cluttered floor.

She leant against the door, breathing slowly and deeply before straightening, swallowing, and smiling. She took one look at the trashed parlour, couldn't even find the energy to complete her earlier spell, and stepped over it all towards the stairs.

Paige had borrowed her meditation CD. It was probably in her room somewhere…

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

"You haven't seen her?" Paige asked Elise. Elise was walking at a brisk pace around the bullpen, handing out sheets of paper to everyone. Paige struggled to keep up the pace despite having the longer legs, and nearly ploughed into her sister's boss when the older woman turned.

"Oh, excuse me!" Elise snapped, obviously flustered, firmly pushing Paige out of the way with the hand that didn't have the stack of papers in. She started walking in the opposite direction, but Paige caught up. "Look, Piper…"

"Paige."

"Oh, I don't have time for names!" Elise barked, closing her eyes and putting her free hand to her temple. Calmer now she took off her glasses, held them at waist height and said, "I'm very sorry you're sister is missing, but not nearly as sorry as she will be when she realizes that she's missed her slot on the radio this afternoon, okay? Now will you please stop bothering me and go and look for my advice columnist?"

Paige found herself ushered to the door and was soon staring at her sister's poster on the corridor wall. Blinking and not completely sure what just happened she frowned, checking the corridor before orbing out.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

Chris could feel cold and damp grains of sand pressing against his stomach, but he didn't dare shift position to adjust his shirt. He was barely hidden as it was behind a pile of stones that looked like they'd come from a recent cave in, judging by the face that the ceiling was a lot thinner just above him.

It looked like a group of warlocks. But they weren't talking about the Fuoco demons that had attacked the house today. Not that Chris was particularly surprised. Demons didn't normally share their plans with warlocks. They didn't trust each other. But there might be some kind of snippet, something he could use…

There was an athame tucked into the back waistband on his jeans and he moved ever so slightly to pull it out and take the hilt in his hand. Apparently all he had to make was that small scuffling noise and the warlocks were onto him. Crap.

"Who's there?" Chris took a deep breath and didn't let it out, praying that he wouldn't be found. A half-witch with an athame against eight warlocks? He didn't stand much of a chance. He didn't want to orb out either, just in case they thought that the noise was nothing and continued talking. They _had_ to know something about Wyatt…

"I bet it's one of those demon scouts again… Go look."

"I'm not sensing a demonic signature in the vicinity…"

"Then it's nothing. Demons are too stupid to master anything but basic subtlety. They'd never cloak their spies," a warlock said, sneering.

Chris relaxed as they went back to talking, albeit in more hushed tones, listening for the slightest noise. Suddenly someone orbing in deafened him. He jumped about a foot in the air. Jeez, he never realized how loud and conspicuous orbing was…

The warlocks all immediately turned to the new arrival. Chris caught sight of a golden robe hovering just above the sandy floor and groaned, tilting his head to look up at his father.

"This really isn't a good time, Leo," he hissed, jerking his head towards the warlocks, which his father had his back to. The Elder didn't get the hint and gave him a hurt look. "Alright then. Dad. But, _Dad_,you need to leave."

"I can't sense Phoebe. Do you have any idea where she is? And… Why are you lying on the floor?"

Chris surged up and tackled his father around the knees, knocking him backwards over the rock pile and exposing himself in the process just as a darklighter's arrow sliced through the air where Leo had once been. A warlock and darklighter mix. Perfect.

He whipped his arm into the air and with a flick of his wrist turned the arrow around and impaled either a warlock of a darklighter through the forehead, vanquishing him. These guys needed neon signs to tell them apart.

"_Now _will you get out of here?" He hissed at Leo as another arrow left a dark purple smear on a rock not far from his neck. He flicked his wrist at that one as well, but missed his target as the warlock blinked out and back in again.

Leo tore off a strip of what was apparently very flimsy Elder robe and wrapped it around the shaft of another arrow, carefully making sure he didn't touch it, and then picked it up to test the weight of the weapon. "Not a chance," he said grimly, refusing to abandon his son. His good parenting started now. He orbed out and orbed in behind the group, stabbing one of them in the back. The arrowhead snapped off and disappeared in the flames as the evil-doer died, so he had to use the jagged shaft to stab another victim. He was able to yank it out of the inferno just in time to prevent losing it, but the cloth shifted and a searing pain that felt like his skin was boiling shot through his unprotected wrist.

The wound was like a raised welt, deep purple and throbbing. Leo dropped the arrow through instinct alone, just as Chris jumped from his hiding place over the pile of rocks and flung a barrage of arrows away from his father.

"GO!" Chris yelled, ducking his own arrows. There were still five on the group left, and four of them were darklighters. He got all of the best luck, he thought grimly as he used an arrow to try to vanquish one of the darklighters that was aiming again as his Elder father. "DAD!"

Leo orbed out, his roar echoing through his orbing lights. "GET OUT, NOW!"

An impact between the witch-whitelighter's shoulder blades sent blistering pain shooting around his body, before it cooled rapidly to turn icy. He fell forward, the feathers ruffling in the darklighter's triumphant laugh as he tried to call out to his father's orbing lights, but nothing but a choked cry came out.

There were nine in the group, not eight.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

Piper stood in the middle of Paige's room with her hands on her hips. It looked like a hurricane had ripped through here. A breeze blew in from the open window and tickled the back of her neck, only emphasizing her point. She sighed and began looking around the room for her CD.

The bed hadn't been made yet, and one of the pillows had gone AWOL in the night. Piper suspected it was the lump at the foot of the bed beneath the covers. She absently dumped the wayward comforter into a pile in the middle of the bed and stepped over a pair of shoes. Near the window an easel appeared to be doing the job of a clothes hanger. Piper supposed it worked, considering that none of them owned a StairMaster.

If her CD was out of its case or scratched or smudged… She suddenly realized that if she were Paige she would have left her guru in the CD player and began crossing back to the other side of them room when she noticed something glinting under the bed.

Was that her CD? Under the _bed?_ Ooh, Paige was going to get it now… After trying and failing to bend she used the bed to heave herself down onto her knees for a closer inspection. No, it was just an earring back. Realizing that she now had to get up again, Piper braced herself and then managed to get back onto her feet before stepping backwards and nearly tripping over a chunky sandal left smack bang in the middle of the floor. Determined she was not going to land on her butt twice in the same hour, let alone day, she grabbed the bedside table and righted herself, but not before knocking the entire contents of the nightstand onto the floor. Her sister's alarm clock slid off and fell to the floor, the flex trailing after it.

As she pulled up the clock she wondered what she was doing up here. She should have stayed in the kitchen, had some crackers. She had completely forgotten why she had hauled her pregnant ass up all of those stairs and as she replaced the alarm clock and the other items she realized that a tube of lipstick had rolled under the bed.

"PAIGE!" Piper whined, wishing her sister could leave her makeup on her vanity table like the rest of them. The lipstick was mocking her, daring her to come and tidy it away and stop the mess, so she got back onto her knees and went to grab it.

The impact behind her made her spin in fright and she fell off of her knees and, surprise surprise, back onto her butt. Maybe she just shouldn't get up anymore She almost blew up the intruder before discovering that it was Leo, and he had orbed right into the armchair Paige had next to her desk/vanity table. Leo had landed so hard he had rocked the chair right off the two front legs before his weight slammed down again.

"Chris… Chris… Where's Chris? Hasn't he orbed in yet?" Piper noticed beads of sweat on his brow and moved forward concernedly, but Leo shook his head and got up out of the chair. "We've got to go and get him! Come on!"

"Wha-? Leo!" Piper squeaked, surprised at the intensity of the grip he held on to her wrist with. Suddenly they broke into an orb cloud and disappeared through the floor.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

Chris's world spun back into painful consciousness. He was being dragged under the arms across the floor. Vaguely, he could feel his sneakers filling up with sand, but his toes were going all tingly and numb anyway, so it wasn't as if he'd be feeling it. Maybe they'd hit his spinal cord…

Just as he was about to black out again he heard voices and forced himself to listen. _Must save Wyatt… Must save Wyatt… Gather information, save Wyatt…_

"Is he dead?"

Someone kicked him, and he grunted.

"Nope."

"Did we get the Elder?"

"Orbed clean out of here."

"Damn. Well, who's going to take this arrow out? He can't talk if he's being pumped full of poison, can he?"

There was a wrenching pain greater than that of the arrow going in, and Chris gave a quiet mew of pain, whimpering as tears stung his eyes. His captors laughed and pulled harder, and as the arrow's barbed head came free he fell back to the floor. He was tempted to blackout again. The darkness was hovering on the peripherals of his vision, and he knew it would be bliss if he would just let it close in…

A sharp backhand slap to his cheek dispelled the comforting darkness and left him with painful, dizzying stars. He groaned and tried to roll over back onto his stomach, not remembering when they'd turned him on his back. Maybe he should orb… Yeah…

_Must save Wyatt. Must save Wyatt…_

He tried to summon his orbing power, but nothing happened. Not even the most tenuous of glimmers emerged from his body and he let his head drop back to the floor and groaned, defeated and at the mercy of evil.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time.

"Special batch of the poison. You're not going anywhere…"

"Really?" Chris heard his mother's voice and looked up at her, just as the darklighter standing above him exploded. "Cuz I'm in the mood to disagree."

The remaining group members reached for weapons, but Piper worked through them all, blowing them up, fuelled by anger. They'd kicked her son! She and Leo had stayed back for a while so Leo could fill her in, and they'd _kicked _him. She flexed her fingers. Finally, something she could _really_ vent her anger on. Something that would scream, not just shatter like a plant pot.

"Step away from my son!" She growled, vanquishing the last of them. "Have a nice time down in purgatory, guys. Hope it's not too warm for ya," she spat, taking Leo's hand – which was oddly and uncharacteristically clammy – and half-dragged him over to Chris. Why was he so out of it?

"Chris, honey, can you hear me?" She smoothed hair back from his forehead and he smiled slightly, trying to speak.

"Mom…" the half-witch half-whispered, before his head slumped again and he finally gave into that sweet analeptic unconsciousness he had desired for.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

Chris was lying on his side on the attic couch. Leo's hands were glowing, but the golden light kept flickering on and off, like a light bulb that was faulty. Piper, however, was bent over a map with Paige scrying for Phoebe and didn't notice. Chris still wasn't awake either and had no idea that his father just kept getting sicker by the minute.

Gradually, however, Chris moaned and rolled so that he was facing the room and blinked up at Leo, giving his father a watery greeting as the wound in his back sealed. Screwing his face up into a grimace, he pulled himself up into a sitting position and faced the room.

"I am so sorry. I didn't even realize there was another darklighter…"

"It's okay; you're fine now, right?" Leo asked, checking his son's face for a response.

"Yeah, thanks… Dad." The words felt odd, so unused, but if he was going to truly get used to this thing then he needed to lubricate the mechanics a little bit, and he smiled again, leaning forwards.

Leo grinned back and went to ruffle Chris's hair, when his son suddenly recoiled in horror.

"Oh my God, you're bleeding!"

Leo looked down at his arm, where rivulets of black blood were soaking into his Elder robes. The purple welt had burst and was oozing deep, dark violaceous poison. "A darklighter's arrow scratched my wrist. I didn't even touch the tip – it was the shaft," Leo dismissed, trying to rearrange his robes over it. He was about to ask for news on Phoebe when Paige broke in.

"Leo, that is not a scratch," his sister-in-law said, putting the crystal down. "That is one nasty wound… Lemme see that…"

Leo snatched his hand away from Paige. "Don't touch it; it might infect you too…"

"Well how else am I going to heal it?" She said, walking closer to him. "I'll just channel your powers again, I'll only touch it for a second…"

"I already nearly got Chris killed earlier by revealing him. I'm not going to hurt anymore of my family today!" He orbed off ceiling-wards.

"LEO!" Piper yelled. "Leo, you better be getting your ass right to those Elders so they can heal you, or I'll-" She trailed off, unable to think of anything off the top of her head. "I'll do something really bad. Yeah, you wait… You'll be sorry if you're not Up There getting healed right now…"

Paige and Chris exchanged hidden smiles, knowing full well that, with whitelighter senses, when you didn't want to listen, you could block everything out.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

Paige sighed and flopped onto her bed, the mattress groaning under her. It felt like ages since the demons had attacked this morning, and she'd been orbing all over town trying to find Phoebe since then. She'd been to three different salons, a health spa, China Town and - just in case Phoebe had mysteriously developed teleportation abilities – the top of Golden Gate Bridge.

And now she was tired. She looked around at her organized clutter and smiled contentedly before sitting up straight and Indian style. While Chris and Piper worked the scrying crystal, she was going to be down here in the quiet and try to sense Phoebe. It was a bit hit-and-miss, and she knew that Leo, with his infinitely more powerful Elder senses had failed, but she could do it if she really tried and besides, she was Phoebe's sister. There was more of a connection.

"Okay, Pheebs… Where are you?" She closed her eyes, took a deep breath in and concentrated on her sister. She'd just seen more than one larger-than-life-size version of her the middle Halliwell on billboards as she appeared and disappeared all around the city looking for her, so her face was pretty fresh in her mind. "C'mon, show me what you've got…"

An image began to flicker into view across the back of her closed eyelids and she relaxed some more, letting it come. She saw a house… Good… A house with Jeep on the drive and - the image changed suddenly and she was unexpectedly seeing one hell of a messy bedroom. It looked like someone had heaped clothes in the middle of the floor and tossed a firework in with them, blowing them around the room. There were clothes draped over an easel, and…

Paige's eyes snapped open and she sighed, unfolding her legs. That vision was _her_ room. And Phoebe most definitely was not here. So much for her supposedly growing whitelighter half. She pulled a face and leaned over the edge of the bed.

If now wasn't time for the goodies tin, then when was? Since she was about nine Paige had kept a metal biscuit box under her bed, full of mainly dark chocolate. She knew that there were Twizzlers in there too, though. Paige didn't feel selfish. After all, Piper _hated_ dark chocolate and Phoebe had been avoiding anything with more than two calories for months now. Why, Paige didn't know. Phoebe looked just great as she was. But there you go. Maybe it was pressures of the job. Paige wouldn't want to be plastered all over billboards with a huge ass. And besides, she had been an only child for so long before now; some little habits were bound to stick with her. She needed something separate from her sisters.

After all, she needed to keep her sugar levels up. And why was she still justifying her goodies tin instead of reaching for it? She'd just been on the way to get a bagel this morning when she got distracted by one of the magazines on the coffee table in the parlour all about Colin Farrell. It was that Irish accent that really did it for her… But anyway, what the point really was, was that she hadn't actually had any breakfast this morning.

She wondered what had happened to the magazine. Maybe she could bring it up to her room later…

As she reached under the bed for the familiar rectangle box her hand tingled, and with a small shriek she disappeared.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

_**Please bear in mind that I write in the early hours of the morning – so it does take many read-overs to catch all of the mistakes, and then sometimes I make more mistakes correcting the mistakes. So yeah. Little errors, whilst I should look out for them, as pesky things that I swear keep switching places when it comes to four AM. Heh, go figure.**_

**Claddagh Ring****: - Heh, thanks. I'm glad you like. Did you wish upon a star? You wanted me, and you got me! Heh. Ignore me, I'm a loser.**

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**Missing Whisper****: - Heh, I bet this chapter didn't feel like a real episode, did it? Lol. I got a tad carried away. When it gets near time to wake up and I'm still writing, I just tend to write what I think, and yesterday morning I was in Piper-mode. Thanks for reviewing.**

**Ghost: - Thanks. Here it is. Or… there is was. Meh.**

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**Tigerdrake: - Thanks!**


	3. Chapter 2

"I give up," Piper said, dumping the crystal in the centre of the map irritably. She strode over to the couch and threw herself down on it, rubbing a hand over her weary and aching eyes.

She had been trying for so long, and no Phoebe. The crystal's spinning had been grinding her last nerve, and the rainbow it fractured the light into on the wall was far too jolly for the situation. She was missing a sister, and they suddenly had a big demonic crisis to deal with. Considering that the Powers That Be _wanted_ the Charmed Ones to vanquish evil they could at least make it a darn sight easier for them.

"Are you okay?" Chris asked concernedly, leaning forward onto the table, toying absently with the chain though not taking his querying eyes off her.

"No, I'm not," Piper snapped back. "My sister is missing and my husband is AWOL and you are going for gold in Olympic Gymnastics in my stomach right now…" She shook her head, running a hand across her forehead in an ineffective motion and staring intently at the floorboards as Chris rolled again in her stomach.

Chris grimaced, realizing that his mother was in one of those moods that made apologizing futile. "Well, I'm doing that because you're stressed. Maybe you should go and rest," he suggested gently. "Me and Paige can handle everything from here…"

Piper looked up at him, removing her hand and cocking an eyebrow at him. "It's 'Paige and I'. And how am I meant to trust you two after what you did downstairs in the parlour?"

"Oh, come on. Would you rather we'd left it a mess?"

Piper scowled at the conflict the two notions made inside her brain. "Well, no, but I mean _magic_?"

The witch-whitelighter pushed back from the table and stood back up straight to his full height, folding his arms across his chest in a vain effort to look vaguely commanding. "Go lie down," he said sternly.

"Don't patronize me," Piper barked back at him. "I'm-"

"-not an invalid," Chris filled in for her.

She glowered at him, her dark eyes burning. "Got that in one. I'm only-"

He smirked at her, cutting her off again. "-pregnant."

She got up from the couch and smacked him on the shoulder. "I'm going to lie down. But _only_ because you being a stupid smart aleck had given me a headache."

"Careful on the stairs," Chris said quietly as she exited.

"Okay, _now_ you're pushing it!" he heard her yell as she made her way into the upper hallway. He rolled his eyes and crossed the room to the window, leaning against the wall and looking out over the street. It looked like it was going to be another hot day; cloudless and dry. The sun was already streaming onto the cracked tarmac of the road, and he knew that before long the tarmac would be shimmering with the heat.

He was stepped back from the brightness, almost hiding in the cool shade just beyond the sun's reach. This was the view he liked. He'd seen it plenty of times in the future, of course, but there were so many more high rises then. And a lot more smog. People really needed to take the global warming thing seriously in this time.

And besides, Wyatt had demolished like half the neighbourhood in an angry rage one day. Anything about three blocks west of here was a field of rubble. That really made a big difference to the view.

Wait… He squinted through the obtrusive rays and saw a figure in the shadows, just as he was. It looked like a small kid, leaning against the trunk of a tree across the street, his face dappled with sunlight and shadow that camouflaged him almost perfectly. If it wasn't for the fact that when the slight breeze that blew through the city from the Bay was moving the leaves in the upper branches, allowing small snatches of sunlight to gleam off what appeared to be a Matchbox car the kid was rolling around in the fine dirt he would have been invisible.

The kid only looked about four, maybe five. How negligent could a parent get to let a child that young play out in the street? Anyone could pull up in a car, and he'd never be seen again. There was a small brown object sitting next to the kid, and Chris couldn't work out what exactly it was.

It wasn't until he felt the heat on his bare arms, magnified by the glass, that he realized he had stepped in full view of the window to get a better look and the mysterious boy sitting there.

Chris moved to turn away. Someone would come along for him eventually. He didn't have the _time_ to play social services right now. He had a little kid of his own to worry about – namely his brother. And saving him meant saving the future and so many lives, saving this one kid wouldn't do that.

Chris sighed, hating how cold he sounded. Sacrifices always had to be made. You couldn't save everyone all at once. Sometimes, one person was worth less than the lives of many people. It was the way things operated in the future, and he hated it. It sickened him and when he challenged it, people just asked him what he would have done. Would he have saved the lives of himself and twenty other people, or hung around for the one that had fallen behind and got them all tortured and killed? It left a bitter taste in his mouth. How could anyone play God and decide who deserved to live and who deserved to die?

But then the kid looked up at the attic window and met Chris's eyes, and Chris felt a strange jolt pass through him, almost if he was suddenly connected to the kid. There were freckles on the child's face, like he had been sitting out there for far too long in the sun.

Chris groaned, unable to look away from the child's unnerving gaze. He shouldn't be doing this right now. They were in the midst of a demonic crisis, were one sister down and still had Wyatt to save before The Deadline… It was odd, he was suddenly so connected to the midget sitting there in the dirt, like the kid was looking into him or something… And as the toddler looked away and started running the car through the dirt again Chris saw innocence. And Phoebe could take care of herself. He knew that from experience. And this kid was so lost and alone…

To be honest it was creepy, but that face held haunted pain. It was an expression he had seen often growing up. But not usually on someone so young… That was why he felt so connected to him. It was like looking at a smaller version of himself.

He walked backwards away from the window, and the kid's eyes didn't vanish from his mind until he was tiptoeing past his mother's door and down the stairs. The feeling was only just starting to dissipate and Chris wondered if it was more than just a feeling as he opened the front door and stepped out into a wall of heat on the porch, looking towards the tree uncertainty before taking a deep breath and making his way across the street.

An innocent was an innocent after all.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

Paige didn't know where exactly she was. Just that it was dark, and there was some kind of thick ash on the floor that she kicked up whenever she walked. It kept making her sneeze. There were huge objects littering the floor as well, and she kept scrambling over them to keep going in a straight line in the direction of the light. Light spilled in front three places, one in front of her that she was aiming for, one behind her and one to her right. She sneezed again as she walked, tripping over something on the floor and falling flat on her face.

She got up and found herself in the middle of a large round object that was gleaming in the faint light. At the top of the loop there was something protruding, and she crossed the space in eleven or twelve strides to go and investigate. It took her a while to get a foothold on the slick, cool metal but when she did she scrambled up and over the rim, falling onto the carpet of ash in the other side. The particles were scarily large as they drifted around her head, she noted. It must have been some fire.

The object at the top of the loop was a huge expanse of shimmering translucent green. She touched it and it was hard and smooth, and she could see all of the cuts in the stone. It had been made like this for some reason… She moved along the space and there was a smaller one a little along the band to her left, and suddenly a terrible feeling hit her. Shifting along with her hands still on the metal she found another stone to her right of the large one. They were enormous peridot. Swallowing and stepping backwards she set down heavily on a gargantuan black cylinder.

Peridot was her birthstone. She had three of them set into ring Glenn had given her before he married Jessica. But she'd lost the ring, and she had been hunting for it for such a long time…

She pushed herself off of her seat and walked the length of it, realizing that there were gold letters on it. Tracing her hands over the letters she read them off one by one. "M-A-Y-B-E-L-L-I-N-E… Maybelline? As in Maybelline New York?" She scrunched up her nose in thought. She had lost this mascara a _long_ time ago. She knew it was hers, because of the chip taken out of the gold 'Y'. Paige sighed, putting her head in her hands in confusion. She had resigned it to being somewhere on Phoebe's vanity table and had bought a new one. Was this some kind of lost and found realm? But it had been much, much smaller when she had lost it...

She looked out at the light spilling in, and then looked up. And then, suddenly, she knew where she was. "Oh, man… You know what, Toto? I think we're still _in_ Kansas."

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

A car drove past as Chris waited on the sidewalk for a chance to get across the street. When it had passed he looked up and down the street to see if anyone else had noticed the boy sitting there in the dirt. It didn't look like anyone had. Not many people were about, but not one of them had _looked_ at the child yet. On closer inspection Chris could actually place the child at around six, perhaps seven at a stretch and as he crossed the street the child ignored him, making engine noises with his lips and running the car around in circles.

"Hey," Chris began, looking down at the kid. The child looked up at him for a couple of seconds and Chris saw an expression and hard lines that shouldn't be on anyone's face, let alone one of a seven-year-old. The kid had unruly brown hair that looked dirty and kind of matted, and there was a smudge of the dirt he was playing with on his freckled cheek.

Chris licked his lips, unsure how to proceed. He couldn't get over the way those eyes seemed to be so… colourless. They were grey with perhaps a hint of blue, but they were so blank and they just had untold sorrow in them. The kid was driving his car around the brown blob Chris had seen from the window – it was a stuffed bear.

"So… What's your name?"

He got more car noises in reply and he was tempted to go back into the house to work on the latest demon crisis and wait for the kid's parents to come and claim him. After all, he _did _have to work out what the fuoco demons plans were, and soon before another wave was sent after them.

"Kaden," the boy replied to the floor, running the car back and forth through the dirt.

"Cool. I'm Chris."

The witch-whitelighter squatted down, and both his knees cracked. Chris winced, pulling a face. How could he be showing this much wear and tear at twenty-two? Kaden didn't notice but then he looked up and Chris felt a headrush that threatened to knock him backwards off of the curb and into the street. The watery grey eyes flashed with their first display of pretty much anything since Chris had seen the kid, and they fugaciously flashed a gentle green. Chris blinked and the eyes were grey again, with the kid's head tilted towards him, his mouth set in a hard line. It had to be a trick of the light, the reflection from his own eyes ending up in the kid's colourless ones.

"You're like one of the ladies who live in that house," Kaden finally told him with a nod, pointing towards the Manor as the light-headed feeling began to fade. Chris rubbed the back of his neck. Something weird was going on here. This kid was doing… something. He wasn't altogether sure what, yet, but he _was_ pretty sure it was magical.

"Yeah, my mom lives there. People say I look kind of like her."

Kaden shook his head. "No, in_side_."

Okay, this was getting so weird. What the hell was the kid going on about? The Matchbox car was lying on its side, abandoned. Kaden caught Chris looking at it and picked it up, shoving it safely into his pocket.

"What do you mean?"

"You're two people," Kaden said, "smushed together." The kid brought his hands together and interlaced the fingers tightly. "But don't worry, because one of the ladies is too, and she's a good people."

Did he mean Paige? Was he referring to the fact that they were both witch-whitelighters? Or was it just that the kid had a really weird view on how babies were made? No, because that wouldn't account for why he said that only one of the 'ladies' was two people 'smushed together.' Chris felt a headache forming. His throat was dry from breathing in the fine dirt the car's wheels had been stirring up and he swallowed, tasting the grit. Also, the back of his head was in the sun and it was rapidly burning, whilst the bulk of him was safe in the shade under the tree, which was not helping to make him comfortable at all. And he didn't want to move towards the kid lest he scare him off, so he'd just have to deal with some kind of uneven tan.

"Will you make me disappear?"

Chris blinked. "Huh?"

"I've _seen_ you. You can disappear by going twinkly. Will I disappear?"

"Uh…" Chris blinked a few times, lost for words. This was getting nowhere. And he had a pain in the ball of his foot rapidly spreading to his Achilles tendon. He shifted slightly and his sneakers made a harsh noise against the dust. This kid obviously knew about their magic, and Chris would go as far to say that the child probably had a power of his own. Some kind of power-reader… "Do you _want_ to disappear?"

Kaden sniffled and his eyes became more distant and began to shimmer, and when he looked up at Chris and shook his head solemnly Chris could see the reflections in the lachrymose eyes.

"No. Mommy and Daddy disappeared."

"When?"

"I don't know…" Kaden looked up and down the street, and then got up and crawled closer to Chris, whispering in the witch-whitelighter's ear. "The monsters got them." Kaden crawled backwards, pressing himself against the bark of the tree and trying to get back as far from Chris as was possible and still continue the conversation.

"Monsters?" Was he talking about demons? Because if he was, the last thing Chris needed was another demonic crisis, with a vanished father and only one really functioning Charmed One to deal with it. He hadn't even got to the bottom of the first one of today yet.

Kaden nodded. "Yeah. They live under the bed."

Ah. Chris couldn't deal with the monsters that could be vanquished with a nightlight either, but he knew Piper could. Many a time the witch had been up in the middle of the night, surrendering her bed to Chris and his irrational fear of the monsters under his bed, always soothing him gently back to sleep with assurances that she would always be there to stop anything happening to him.

It didn't matter that she had been wrong, and she had left him to fight for his life against his brother – all that mattered was what she had done for him, and he loved her for it.

It suddenly dawned on him that, because there were no such things as monsters, the boy's parents had probably run away and left him, and he had just assumed that his childhood fear had taken them. It made him mad to realize that parents couldn't face up to their responsibilities. Perhaps they had suspected, as he was suspecting now, that Kaden was somehow magical and that was why they'd dumped him.

"Do you want to come inside?" Chris asked, the pain in his feet being replaced by pins and needles.

Kaden looked terrified and shook his head. "No!"

"O…kay… Why not?"

"Cuz the monsters are in there."

"They're not…" Kaden looked at him. Chris didn't know a seven-year-old could _do _sceptical. "Well, there are a couple. But it's okay. I won't let them hurt you." And he meant it. He was not going to give this child cause for anymore suffering, even if it meant fighting off that entire demonic attack from this morning all over again.

Something about his voice and expression must have shown that Chris was sincere, because Kaden then nodded and grabbed the bear by the arm. Its other three limbs lolled limply as the kid rose from the dirt and then looked down at Chris, who was still crouched in it. Chris made an effort to get up but fell backwards off of the curb and into the street as his left foot completely failed to obey him in any way.

Kaden stepped next to the witch-whitelighter lying on his back between to parked cars and leaned into Chris's line of vision, blotting the sun from the witch-whitelighter's eyes, his face still showing no emotion.

Chris blushed and cleared his throat. "Just a minute, kid, okay?"

Kaden chose to nod rather than speak again, and Chris hauled himself off of the tarmac and onto his feet. His knee buckled unexpectedly and he grabbed for the mirror of a car next to him. He realized that he couldn't feel his calves and he wondered why the hell he'd chosen such a dumb position in the first place. He put a hand on Kaden's shoulder to help him across the street, but the child shrugged it off and looked both ways before crossing himself.

It didn't make sense. Why would the parents teach him something like how to cross the road if they were just going to abandon him? If they didn't want him, they why teach him something that was going to help in his life? This was all very confusing.

Kaden hung back on the porch as Chris opened the door, suddenly looking petrified again at the prospect of crossing the threshold. He shrank back from the doorway, backing out of the porch and down the steps, clutching the bear to his chest.

"It's okay. I promise."

Apparently Chris's most sincere promise, although adept in getting Kaden on the same side of the street as the Manor, would not get the kid inside the house and he continued to back away from the door, shaking his head. Chris felt so helpless as Kaden even let out a whimper. Kids… Kids were so not his forte. He had no idea how to console him and make it better. They confused him so much and even though he could feel his heart going out to the fear and pain he couldn't work out what he was meant to do about it.

"Chris? Is that you letting the heat in?" Chris turned to see Piper skirting around assorted debris on the parlour floor, a tub of ice cream in her hand, a spoon at the ready in the other.

"I thought you were lying down."

Piper flicked her eyebrows up and down, gesturing with her spoon. "I thought _you_ were scrying for Phoebe."

"Touché."

Piper looked around the door and saw Kaden, looking so small and pale even under his freckles, clutching the bear to his chest in a death grip as if it were going to protect him.

"Any reason you're dragging children home?" she asked, taking a spoonful of ice cream to her mouth. She observed Kaden again. "Not only that, but you're scaring the poor little guy to death. What's the matter, sweetie?"

"Monsters."

Piper rolled her eyes, dug the spoon into the carton of ice cream up to the handle and licked off all of her fingers, slamming the tub onto the table. "Oh, a titchy innocent. Just what we needed. Thanks, Chris."

Chris shrugged weakly. "Hey, you don't choose innocents. They choose you."

Piper narrowed her eyes at him. "I have a funny feeling you're quoting me, so I'll let that one slide."

"It's okay, don't worry…" Chris tried to coax Kaden over the threshold, but the abject terror had the kid frozen, unable to even back away anymore.

"The monsters," Kaden whispered again, shrinking back from the house despite the appearance that his feet were cemented to the path and into the shell Chris had seen as he played.

"There are no monsters here, honey," Piper said, extending a hand. "Just us. You like cookies, right? Well, I just made a whole batch, and you can have some if you come in."

"You made a whole batch of cookies?" Chris demanded, turning to her. "When?"

"The other day, when you were all out of the house so I wouldn't have to try and cook with requests to lick the bowl or the utensils or have them disappear the moment they were put on the cooling rack."

Chris pouted. "You could have _told_ me. I _am_ your son…"

Piper smiled brightly. "Got it in one."

"I did a bad thing."

Piper, startled, looked out into the porch at the kid. He had walked closer to the house determinedly, but his knuckles were white as he held the bear's leg in a vice grip, tormenting the stuffing within.

"What was it, honey?" Piper asked, crouching down to look him in the face. Immediately she was overcome with such a wave of nausea she had to grab at the doorframe for support. Prescott Street blurred in and out of focus and the sunlight suddenly seemed way too bright. She could have sworn she saw Kaden's eyes flash a deep brown, but then she had to close her own eyes to stop herself from falling over.

Chris slid down the wall beside her, his eyes closed. A soft moan escaped his lips as the foyer and parlour lurched sickeningly, and his head felt detached from his body, so light and separate, and small floating blobs of colour danced across his vision.

The street suddenly stopped spinning and Piper was left clutching the doorframe so hard that her own knuckles were white, and it wasn't just the weather that was making sweat bead her forehead.

Kaden stood on the porch, watching with mild interest before swivelling his eyes over to the flowers growing up the side of the porch.

"What the _hell_ was that?" Piper demanded, glaring at Chris who was all but passed out on the floor next to her.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

_**Wow, thanks for all of your great reviews. Doesn't mean I wouldn't like a couple more though – heh.**_

**_Right now it's coming to the crunch time. I have exams starting May 11th, and from there on there is no going back at all. I've got to sit through the lot and pass the lot if I want to do anything other with my life than flip burgers. So writing is going to become more and more difficult as my stress levels rise. I do have a two week Easter break coming up on Wednesday, but I'm going to Paris over the Easter weekend and won't be available for anything, which means that I won't be able to do any revision and I really have to revise otherwise I'll end up getting rejected by McDonalds or something. So updates'll be as and when. Just wish me luck – it's all over by June 27th!_**

_**Twisted Flame **_

**Aldrea7: - Oh, it's not _that_ long. Heh. See, you can do it? I'm so very proud of you. And it's a double 'N'. Thank you!**

**Leigh1986****: - Heh. It's been a while. Oops. Hope you liked. Thanks for reviewing – I really appreciated it.**

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**mizunderstood writer: - Soon in my language or soon in yours? Heh. Sorry… Thanks for the review, though!**

**As Always****: - I know, it should have come sooner. I'm sorry! But I hope you liked this chapter. You're really kid – thank you!**

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**Aron: - Heh, ya think so? Thanks!**


	4. Chapter 3

_**Heh, I gave up sleep for this. Sorry about the small errors, but I think I might be clinically dead… Wait, no, there's the pulse.**_

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

"Maybe… Maybe it's his power?" Chris suggested hoarsely, slumped on the parlour's sofa. He had a moist washcloth on his head and it was trickling down the side of his face. He scrubbed angrily at the water with his sleeve and another bead rolled down to take its predecessor's place. He swiped it off his head and threw it down onto the end table next to him with a splat. Stupid thing. He knew his mother was trying to help, but still. Now he was all wet. But, to be fair, he _was_ starting to feel better.

"His power is making people faint?" Piper asked sceptically, leaning against the sunroom's doorframe and watching Kaden. The child was sitting on the floor of the sunroom, watching some cartoon or the other intently. Wyatt was sitting in his playpen, also watching through the mesh that was the side. Quite subdued, actually, she noticed. Normally he would be blinking the channel all over the place. She watched him every second when he was placed in front of the TV — the dragon incident had damn near killed her last time. Figuratively and literally. But Wyatt didn't appear to be interfering with the TV today.

It made sense, therefore, that Kaden somehow had a strange, enervating power on magical beings and it was extant right now in the sunroom. His presence in the room was keeping Wyatt almost like a normal kid for once. She wasn't worried — from experience she knew that it took the full force of the kid's odd gaze to knock you on your ass. And the kid was looking at nowhere near her son. He had eyes for nothing but the TV. It couldn't be healthy but if it kept his eyes occupied then she was damned if she was going to argue. At least until they could figure out what it was exactly that he did with them.

"No, like… Maybe he can shut down power? Or suppress power?"

"I've never heard of a power like that…" Piper said doubtfully. "And if that's true, why did you end up worse off than me?"

"I got double the dose. Power drained from baby me and… me," Chris explained, pushing damp hair off his forehead and watching as the water from the washcloth pooled on a magazine.

"Well, in that case we should really keep him away from you until we can work something out," Piper said, turning and looking at Chris. "Did I tell you that you could take your washcloth off?" She demanded, looking to where the cloth was seeping water around a coaster.

"Look, I'm fine. Right now I'm more worried about seeing how or even if this factorises into the Wyatt situation, okay?"

Piper looked at the witch-whitelighter sadly as he pushed himself up from the couch, wobbled slightly, and then made for the stairs and probably the attic. She hated that she'd failed so much in raising him that every time he showed weakness or began to open up he atavistically became neurotic again, concerned about nothing but his mission. She could only guess what he had been through to turn him into that.

She sighed and snagged the baby monitor from atop the TV with its counterpart and gripped it tightly in one hand, using the other to clutch the banister as she braved the stairs. Climbing these had become such a freaking chore recently, and before she was at the top she was already more out of breath than she would have liked to have been.

And kind of faint. She hoped nothing was wrong with baby Chris inside her. Her knuckles whitened on the banister and she turned, sitting on one of the steps until the dizziness passed. She looked up and found Kaden on the half landing, looking directly at her and immediately a wave of weakness washed over her.

"Sweetie… What do you want?"

Kaden just looked at her, his grey eyes glinting slightly and unnaturally brown. Piper tried to stare him down but Kaden just stood there solemnly, gazing unnervingly back at her.

"Are you hungry? Thirsty?"

Kaden nodded and dropped his gaze to the stair carpet and Piper was able to drag herself back up again and make her way downstairs. She'd call Paige down and have her check the Book of Shadows for something on Kaden later.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

Paige sat down heavily on her mascara again, chewing on a nail in thought. She found if faintly ridiculous that she was _able_ to sit down on her mascara but pushed the thought to one side. She had to get out of here so she could find Phoebe and then the demons. Or so the demons could find her and… She shook her head, climbing to her feet and orbing out.

The lights seemed harsh and a furbelow for such dust and darkness but she vanished into their comforting lull. Orbing had been weird as first — perhaps something to do with her separate atoms breaking up or something — but now it came as naturally to her as did breathing, and was peaceful and actually kinda serene.

She was jarred out of that painfully in a flash of sparks as she hit something very solid and was thrown back. The orbs were killed around her, extinguished quickly and she looked up, shaking her head. The barrier between the light and the darkness under here was so little a way away and she got up, marching determinedly towards it.

The tassels of her comforter trailed down onto the floor and seemed to be vibrating oddly. She reached out tentatively for one — thinking that perhaps if she climbed up onto her bed then she might be able to make herself heard and found — and got a shock that blasted her back down on her butt again. She cursed fluently and got up, brushing off the back of her skirt.

"Chris? Leo?" She tried, looking up at the looming slats above her. She waited but nothing happened. Defeated she sat down once again and tried to plan her next move.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

Kaden was sitting at the kitchen table, gripping a glass of juice carefully in both hands. He brought it to his lips and drank before setting it down on the very centre of one of the coasters.

Piper was routing around in one of the cupboards, craning on tiptoe to reach the top shelf of the cupboard. Her fingertips were just brushing air and she stretched even further, willing there to be something there for Kaden to eat. She was ashamed at the lack of stock in her kitchen. What with everything going on recently she hadn't even had the time to think about going shopping. She eyed the grocery list stuck to the fridge with a magnet guiltily. The rule was that if you came close to using something up then you wrote it on the list. Someone had stapled another sheet of notebook onto the bottom and had continued to add things to the list.

Suddenly her fingers found a box and she pulled it out, dragging it to the edge and letting it fall into her arms. It was a box of Saltines and, judging by the use by date, they had been bought when she was pregnant with Wyatt. She snorted with disgust and tossed them into the trash. The lid flapped open, engulfed the crackers, and swung shut again.

So far all she had found was half a box of cornflakes; a jar of instant coffee; four slices of bread; some decidedly furry cheese; a carton of orange juice; – which was barely full and she had given Kaden the entire contents – a shrivelled apple; some frozen salmon; two bottles of mineral water; a wrinkled tomato and some very, very basic baking ingredients. The flour had had weevils in and she had fed the bin that as well.

Of course the potion cabinet was full to bursting but she was incredibly dubious as to whether Kaden would snack on wolfsbane, aconite and powdered cockroach wings. She looked at her pitiful spoils – even out of flour to whip up some cookies – and was at a loss. There was no milk for the cornflakes, no butter for the bread and she doubted Kaden would eat salmon even if she could be bothered to go to the trouble of cooking it.

And it turned out that the cookies she had made the other day needed to be hidden better, because the entire contents of the Tupperware container had disappeared mysteriously overnight. So she didn't have anything to give him. At all. Except for the puddle that had become her ice cream on the table in the foyer and that didn't look appetising even to her, and she was pregnant…

She sighed and leaned on the island, before snagging the baby monitor from the counter and making for the stairs again. She could always pay Paige back later for raiding her half-sister's 'secret' goodie tin.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

Chris had read the passage on Fuoco demons about eight times now, and it wasn't wielding any new information. Vanquishing spell, basic bio, how to ID them… He rubbed his eyes and closed the book, then opened it again. Maybe he could find some information on Kaden or his power… But he didn't know where to look. He didn't know what the power was called, or if he should look up Kaden specifically, — perhaps he was a demon? — or whether he should look up magical effects…

He had just closed the Book for the second time and was running a hand over the triquetera on the cover, flicking away imaginary pieces of lint from his heritage, when he heard his mother shriek.

He was running across the attic and was barrelling down the stairs to the first floor hallway, calling her name within twenty seconds.

"Mom?" He opened her bedroom door, looked in her bathroom and in the nursery and found it empty. He crossed to the bathroom, which was just as empty as her bedroom and crossed through using the door on the other side to look in Phoebe's room. Except for the dust that was still only just settling from the fight that morning and splinters of jagged door, that was empty as well. He poked his head into the spare soon-to-be-nursery room and found it empty. The guest bedroom was empty and he jogged through Paige's door last. He expected to see his aunt sitting on her bed where he had assumed she'd been for most of the afternoon, but her room was empty.

All of the rooms up here were empty. But he had heard Piper shriek from down here… Confused he was about to leave the room when he heard a faint noise in his head. It was the tiniest of whispers and he had to fight hard to hear it, but it was there. He stepped backwards out of the room and the voice was completely gone. He re-entered Paige's room and the voice was back and he even shut the window against the noise of Prescott Street to define it better. It was so faint but he swore someone was calling his name…

"Mom?" He asked uncertainly, cocking his head to try and hear it. The noise got slightly louder and he dropped onto his hands and knees, listening hard. The noise was louder at floor level and he smiled. Someone was yelling his name at the top of their lungs. Two people, actually.

There was a sudden cry from the floor and Chris yelped and jumped, knocking into Paige's bedside table and scattering its contents across the floor and under the bed.

Wyatt's baby monitor was discarded on the floor next to him.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

"CHRIS! CHRIS!"

"Piper, I already yelled my head off and it didn't work," Paige said, exhausted just by watching Piper pace and yell.

"He's going to hear _me._ I'm his mother. Plus he's got to have heard me shriek and come looking for me."

Paige rolled her eyes and looked down at her nails. She'd picked the cuticles to shreds and they were really starting to hurt.

Suddenly thunderous footsteps announced someone's arrival in the room. Paige had already been through this phenomenon and didn't even look up, but Piper filled her lungs and hollered louder.

"CHRIS! I'M UNDER HERE!"

"You do know that he's, like, huge and you probably just sound like a squeak?"

"I'm shouting for his whitelighter half," Piper snapped, glaring at Paige. "CHRIS!"

"He's not coming," Paige told her in a singsong voice, wishing her sister would stop exerting herself for the sake of her nephew.

"CHRIS! HELP!"

There was suddenly a loud crash and objects came tumbling down around Piper. A pot of night cream nearly flattened her when she discovered that it was too heavy to freeze and she threw herself out of the way just in time, covering her head with her hand until the cavalcade of the contents of the surface of Paige's nightstand stopped. The footfalls started again and Piper looked up in desperation, yelling for her son one last time before all went quiet.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

"Hey, Wyatt. What's up?" Chris asked, walking into the sunroom and comforting the crying toddler, lifting him out of his playpen and gently bouncing him up and down. "Are you hungry? Please let it be hungry…"

Gradually, the twice-blessed child stopped crying and his eyelids drooped and he began to fall asleep on Chris's shoulder. Chris patted his brother's head awkwardly, stroking the blond hair and making more comforting noises. This was so weird…

Once Wyatt was fully asleep Chris tried to shift him to lie him down, but the child stirred and started whimpering, curling his fingers stubbornly around Chris's collar. The witch-whitelighter sighed and looked to the ceiling, softly calling for his father.

He tried again, slightly louder this time and Leo orbed tentatively into view. Chris smiled at him absently, gesturing to his sleeping brother. Leo moved over to him and gently took Wyatt from Chris without disturbing him and, supporting the child's head, lay him down in his playpen to sleep.

"I could have done that," Chris said, looking down at his sleeping brother.

"Yeah…"

"I could!" Chris said indignantly.

"Then why did you need me?" Leo asked smugly, also looking down at Wyatt.

"I… I needed you investigate something. It's weird, but I think Mom and Aunt Phoebe and Aunt Paige are in the same place… I can hear at least two people calling me, but only when I'm standing in Aunt Paige's bedroom."

"Do we have guests?" Leo asked, looking towards the doorway.

Chris looked up and saw Kaden standing there, looking at his shoes. "Oh, it's Kaden. He's the innocent of the week. Leo, Kaden, Kaden, this I Leo. Okay? He's gotta go back of upstairs now but you can watch some more TV, yeah?"

Kaden perched on the edge of a wicker armchair again as Leo left and Chris collapsed into the couch, putting his feet up on the coffee table and wishing he had a hat to pull over his eyes. He'd see what Leo had turned up in a minute but for now he just wanted to rest because he was feeling so sleepy and shaky and…

Chris opened his eyes to find Kaden staring at him, the child's eyes glazed over green. Chris scrambled up from the sofa. Maybe he'd go help Leo after all.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

**Stony Angel****: - Thank you, honey! Look, I'm thanking you two times in one night. And hopefully, Chapter Fourteen is going to be out tomorrow. Thank you so much!**

**mizunderstood writer**** I had most of this written, but then I was too lazy to polish it and finish it, so that's why it took so long. Sigh. I've really got to get out of this habit. But I've updated two fics today, and another one is looking good for tomorrow, so be happy? Please? Heh. Thank you so much for reviewing.**

**chattypandagurl****: - Heh. Soon, or two months later? Wince. I really was bad with this one, huh? Thank you so much for reviewing.**

**Claddagh Ring****: - Heh, thank you. Four exams down, sixteen more to go… Yay…**

**Sable: - I think I put one in the prologue, did I not? Grumble. It's been so hard to remember — it was so long ago…**

**Joskers****: - I try, I really do. I can't help it, though. I'm sorry. But thanks for reviewing!**

**As Always****: - God, the kid is freaky. You're right. He kinda scares me, and I'm writing him. But then again, I don't particularly like little kids anyway. But yeah. Thanks for reviewing!**

**Aldrea7****: - HEH! IT'S YOU! I remember you. You were here the other day at the bus stop waiting to be picked up by an orange elephant… 'Thanks for reviewing!' I cry as you thunder off into the distance…**


	5. Chapter 4

This babysitting stuff was harder than you would think, Chris thought, making his way to the bottom of the stairs. He paused before ascending, putting a hand on the banister and checking the sunroom one more time. Kaden was sitting on the edge of one of the wicker chairs watching some more cartoons. He could just about see Wyatt's foot, but the rest of the view of his brother was blocked by the sunroom wall.

He remembered that he had been going to look for information on Kaden in the Book of Shadows and looked up at the ceiling, starting up the stairs. He'd go and see if Leo had had any luck finding the Charmed Ones, then go and finish looking in the Book. Hopefully, the tome would reveal something that would solve both the sisters' disappearance and Kaden's _ap_pearance all at once.

Just as he was dutifully clipping the baby monitor to his waistband, there was a crunch behind him and he whipped around, seeing a demon standing in the foyer. It had been revealed by standing on a piece of broken lamp from the happy smashing session that had been the bulk of today. Chris's arm shot out, sending it catapulting back into the wall. The demon grunted as it hit, its fire-like eyes wide with surprise.

"What do you want?" Chris asked, his eyes cold, snapped instantly to battle mode. "Who sent you?"

The demon sneered, forming an energy ball. "Die, witch," it growled, before throwing it at Chris.

Chris held out his hand and the ball reversed direction, crashing into the wall and forming a scorch mark just above the demon's head. "I asked who you were sent by," the witch-whitelighter demanded again, his tone dangerous, not lowering his arm, letting the demon see the power at his command. Sometimes, just sometimes, having a tyrant for a brother was a good thing. You got to learn how to deal with demons, for one thing.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" the demon mocked, straightening up and throwing another energy ball at Chris.

The witch-whitelighter raised an arm, but felt a weird tugging at his heart and his power never left his outstretched hand. Sudden lethargy rooted him to the spot and the energy ball crashed into his abdomen, the force sending him flying into the wall above the half-landing. He fell onto the stairs and then limply rolled down the two steps into the foyer and lay there, stunned, staring at the ceiling and groaning.

Kaden…

The young boy was standing in the doorway of the conservatory staring at Chris, his eyes glazed over green. Chris tried to call out, but no sound would leave his body. He could practically see the dark vortex he was teetering on the edge of, and between the draining effect of Kaden's power and the force he had been slammed into the wall he didn't know how much longer it would be before he had to give in and just go round and round and round…

But then he felt a tiny warm tide of strength run through him and he raised his head, squinting. Kaden was standing in the doorway still, but this time the child's eyes were burning an orangey-red and fixed on the demon, which was on its knees. Chris held out a trembling hand and made a fist, feeling the demon's life-force drain from it as its heart crumbled. Eventually, the demon burst into flames and Chris's hand slammed back to the floor. The brunette was breathing heavily and he rolled back onto his back to look at the ceiling again, swallowing hard. They should think about blindfolding the kid, Chris through bitterly, just about managing to breathe normally again. He sat up and patted himself down, finding out that there were no grievous injuries for now. He had probably fractured a couple of ribs and most definitely would have bruises, but he knew that there was nothing to do for those but rest. Unless…

He didn't like asking for favours. Not from anyone and especially not from Leo, but considering his father seemed to be trying to start things again with the right foot forward, maybe Chris should do the same by going to his father now he was hurt. Leo could heal him betimes his injuries healed themselves wonky again. It would be the responsible, mature thing to do, although he'd never been good at that and had been told so often when he was a teenager. Not recently, though. Recently he had been told that he was too mature. That he didn't act like his twenty-two years. Ironic, really, in a way Chris's brain, too busy running demonic facts and connections through, did not have the time to comprehend.

Chris pulled a face and sat up, wincing, not daring to look back at Kaden and willing the kid with all of the power he had in his mind not to look at him, because he now had to haul himself up the stairs and he could really do with not falling down them again. "Aren't you missing cartoons?" Chris asked of Kaden, keeping his eyes on the floor.

Kaden didn't say anything and Chris grimaced before risking a glance up at the kid. Kaden was looking at his shoe, which he was scuffing on a shard of broken glass from the sunroom doors.

"What's the matter?" Chris asked a little snappishly, and Kaden only bowed his head further. Chris bit his tongue to stop another retort coming out. He was feeling bad and it was partly the kid's fault, but he shouldn't take out on him. It wasn't fair. The witch-whitelighter rubbed a weary hand across weary eyes and twisted his mouth in thought, watching the kid inspect his shoe. "Hungry? Thirsty?"

Kaden nodded and muttered, "Hungry."

Chris sighed with slight annoyance and remembered this morning, when the only thing he'd found to eat in the entire Manor were some kind of sugar lumps masquerading as a breakfast cereal. No milk, either, but that wasn't too troubling. The cereal, however, was. It was something of his Aunt Phoebe's, by the taste of it, and had had enough E-numbers and preservatives in it to survive a nuclear holocaust. He didn't know what was up with her sweet tooth. It must be permanently on overdrive or something. He rolled his eyes skyward and supposed he could always pay Paige back later for use of her 'secret' goodie tin. With what money he had no idea, but he'd think of something.

"Okay, sure. I'll be back in a second," Chris said, turning towards the stairs and going up them in bounds. While he was there, he could check on Leo and see if his dad had had any progress in finding the sisters. Then, when he'd delivered Kaden something good to eat, he'd go and hit the Book of Shadows some more and see what they could turn up about the Charmed Ones' disappearance. Having a plan was something his mother had most definitely instilled on him, he thought wryly as he reached the upper hallway. Even with things that weren't in any way numinous, like a pile of homework, should always be tackled with some kind of plan in Piper's view. It was just part of her rigid structures that were more of a support system than anything. He came to realise this as he got older; that they were not an annoyance and that they came in handy as crutches more often than not, especially when leading a life as he had in the future. If you planned ahead, if you knew what you were going to do next, it made everything so much easier. "Dad?" he called to the first floor, cocking his head to one side in order to capture any answer, however small. "Leo?" he tried, just in case his first shout had come as of much as a shock to Leo as it had to him.

Floorboards creaked and Chris spun on his heel, pain shooting from his ribs and spine like white-hot knife points. He allowed himself a moment to stand still and wince before determining that no one was behind him and that the sound had been coming from one of the bedrooms. He instinctively knew that it was Paige's bedroom and, seeing as that was where he was heading anyway he walked purposefully towards it, swallowing his fear. "Leo?" he called again, lightly pushing on the dark wood of the ajar door. It swung into Paige's bedroom and the witch-whitelighter looked around the room to see Leo on his knees, his head under the bed. "D-dad?"

Leo actually cracked his head on the underside of the bed with the speed that he yanked himself back into the room, his eye feral, searching for the source of the sound that had distracted him. He snarled and got to his feet, his fists balling by his sides.

Chris frowned a little, a question forming on his lips as Leo was suddenly surrounded completely by orbing lights. The mass of clamouring lights leapt from the floor and _shot_ across the room at him, the blue and white, shrieking cloud closing the gap between them in a second. It was all Chris could do to put an arm over his face before Leo hit him with what had to be the loudest thump he had ever heard. He felt his ribcage buckle under the sledgehammer blow and the air was punched out of his lungs as he was slammed back against the door, which slammed closed behind him before bursting outwards in a torrent of splinters, the blow knocking him right through it to crash into the opposite wall of the corridor outside Paige's room.

He screwed his eyes shut, wanting to vomit, and curled into a foetal position on the floor. He wasn't aware of the sounds of Leo stepping on stakes of wood and snapping them, all he could think of was the way his vision was still reeling from the blow. Air was finally drawn into his lungs and the mere inflation of the organs caused stabs of pain in his ribcage and he winced, convinced his bruises had spawned little baby bruises of their own.

There was suddenly even more pressure around his back and under his arms and he blinked, forcing what was happening to enter his brain. Leo had grabbed two fistfuls of his jacket and was pulling him to his feet. Chris stood with some effort, using the wall for the majority of his support, but still well aware that should his father choose to let go of him, he'd fall back down into a heap. The witch-whitelighter closed his eyes in a grimace and then opened them again to find himself staring back into eyes identical to his own. His father's eyes had always been a slightly different shade to his — Leo's were a little browner, more olive — but now they were mirroring his own irises exactly. It was then he was hit with a sudden bout of dizziness strong enough to force his eyes to roll back into his head and his muscles to give in totally. Leo couldn't hold a sudden dead weight and his father's arms gave out, dropping Chris back onto the floor.

The witch-whitelighter's head cracked against the skirting board and the sudden sharp pain snapped him out of the trance-like state he had been in. As the pain began to recede, the dizziness threatened to trammel him again and he decided he had to act. Coiling and then releasing an aching leg muscle, he kicked out at Leo's ankle, unbalancing the Elder so that he fell awkwardly onto one knee, which then dragged the other down after it. Chris immediately summoned what felt like the last of his strength and dissolved into evanescent blue orbs just in time to evade his father's grasps, and slipped through Leo's fingers like shimmering smoke.

_**Learning to Tango**_

Chris rematerialized slowly in the backroom of P3. As soon as he was done orbing and had done the customary check to make sure that no parts of him had been left behind due to his exhaustion, he collapsed face first onto the small bed, breathing hard despite the pain it caused. He knew that to breathe shallowly in a situation like this would only serve to inflate his stomach — painfully — with air, which would have to be released somehow, more often than not with a tube up his nose. He'd seen it happen.

Leo had attacked him. He had actually _attacked _him. He finally felt like he was going to suffocate and turned his head to one side, letting the cool air of the room onto his face and into his lungs. A spell. That had to be it. Leo had to be under a spell of some sort; that was the only explanation. Leo had let him down a lot in his life — what busy parent hadn't let their child down at some point or the other? — but the Elder had never been violent. Never, not once. Chris was so sure that Leo _couldn't_ be violent. He always thought of it as some kind of computer chip embedded into his father that carried the whole Elder programme thing.

It had to be the same spell as Kaden as well. Kaden's eyes changed depending on the person he was looking at or, more accurately, draining. And Leo's eyes had been green, like his. Where had the spell come from, though? He had hardly left Leo alone for long enough, and the Elder had been fine before he had left for Paige's room. So, something in Paige's room? He sighed. That made no sense. The thing in Paige's room had apparently taken his mother and aunts somehow, so why would it simply put a spell on Leo to make him violent instead of taking him as well? He rubbed his eyes and looked at the ceiling. The Book of Shadows would be his next stop. He was surprised he didn't know the bloody thing off by heart, the amount of times he had looked through it trying to save—

Wyatt.

His heart thumping away in his mouth, he pushed himself up from his bed and immediately broke into a cloud of orbs that pressed closer to him like the heads of a cabal before whisking him away.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

It took longer than it had done for a long time for him to appear. He was in the sunroom, but the walls rapidly tilted and his legs gave way, hit body thudding to the tiles. It hurt all over. It hurt to breathe and it most definitely hurt to exert the energy needed to make orbing work, and yet here he was. The sound of his brother wailing reached his ears, penetrating into his head and giving him something to grip onto to stop himself succumbing to unconsciousness. He gave a small groan and lifted his head a little, forcing his vision into focus. Wyatt was sitting up in his playpen, his face red with the crying. His bubble was up, forming the shimmering blue shield. Leo and Kaden where standing around the playpen, their eyes blue. They were holding their hands centimetres from the force field, but didn't seem to be able to penetrate it. Yet.

Chris sucked a deep breath in despite the pain and launched himself from the floor, tackling Leo bodily to the ground. His father's head bounced against the floor and Chris used the edge of the playpen to pull himself up. Kaden turned his head, but Chris raised an arm that felt as if it were sculpted from lead and flung the kid into an open toy chest. Kaden landed relatively safely on the collection of stuffed toys just as Leo grabbed Chris's ankle and flipped him to the ground. The witch-whitelighter screamed soundlessly at the pain hitting the floor caused and had to fight not to pass out. Black spots crossed across his vision for a second, but, again, it was Wyatt's cries that kept him from going over that particular precipice.

The black spots in front of his vision suddenly increased tenfold as Leo looked down at him, his irises swirling slightly to become green. His lungs were being crushed by a frigid iron fist; the same iron fingers that were closing around his heart. He moaned as much as his rapid breathing would allow and struggled vainly as Leo grabbed a fistful of his jacket for the second time that day and began dragging him across the tiled floor by his arm.

There was a crack from across the room as the side of the box snapped, sending a slew of toys and Kaden tumbling to the floor. The child gathered himself up from the floor just as Leo turned away from Chris to drag him out the door. Immediately, warm relief flooded Chris's head long enough for him to lever himself onto his shoulder blades and use both feet to kick backwards over his head at Leo. The Elder fell over backwards, letting go of Chris and the brunette managed to half-crawl, half drag himself back across the room towards Wyatt's playpen, sending a wicker chair into Kaden to distract the kid long enough for him to clench a fist around the leg of Wyatt's playpen and orb away.

The attic was lit momentarily by his orbing lights. Chris knew he was running on a vicious cocktail of adrenaline and endorphins and didn't have long before they stopped working and he dropped. His mind already buzzing a little with tiredness, he waved an arm. The attic door clicked quietly shut and the lock turned. Then the lights snapped on, and Wyatt was shocked so that he forgot to cry when he next inhaled.

Taking advantage of this, Chris knelt on the floor beside the playpen, grabbing a bear from the padded floor and waving it at Wyatt in a peace offering. The toddler's eyes were shining and as red as his face from the screaming he had been doing, and he turned them on the bear. Chris was making it dance tiredly and Wyatt retracted his shield to reach out for the toy. The blonde toddler took the bear's neck into a death grip in the crook of his arm and stuck the thumb on the same hand into his mouth, looking reproachfully at Chris.

"Don't blame me for this," the brunette said sourly. "Don't even think about it." Wyatt's lip began to tremble again and Chris swallowed an angry noise and rolled his eyes. "Okay. Okay, you're okay…" He reached into the playpen and balanced his brother on his hip. Wyatt clung to him with his legs and Chris held the toddler in place with an arm around his waist. "Shall we go look at the book? Yeah, we'll go look at the book. See how to kill all of the scary monsters. Good idea, right?" When Wyatt stuck the bear's ear in his mouth Chris took that as a yes and crossed the boarded floor quietly, pushing Wyatt into a more secure position as he reached the Book's pedestal.

There was a loud crash downstairs and Wyatt took the bear out of his mouth and opened it as if to cry again, but Chris, wide-eyed with panic, jiggled his brother up and down, biting the inside of his cheek and searing pains spread across his back and chest. He made absent shushing noises as he awkwardly turned the thick pages with one hand.

Wyatt was making the bear punch him and he grimaced, shifting him up again. As long as he didn't think about how he was holding his future overlord, abuser, torturer, kidnapper and superior in his arms, it would be okay. He kept repeating that to himself, determined not to let himself feel weird about it. He needed to get over that if he was going to save his brother. But, well, still…

What was he looking for? There was another crash, followed by the sound of splintering wood, and he flipped faster. Demons, obviously. Demons that… did something — drained you through your eyes. Okay, good. Demons that _possessed _people to drain you through your eyes. Unless Kaden wasn't possessed, just a demon. Ugh… Were these the same demons responsible for the kidnapping of his mother and aunts? Why couldn't someone put this stupid book on a CDROM, for Heaven's sake! CDs were the thing of this time, right? It would still work — CDs were ancient as far as he was concerned, so looking up demons would still be a historical process — so why had no one done it yet? As much as he would hate to see all of these generations of history condensed into something as clinical as a CD, surely it would be better? Faster, and without the truckload of circumlocution his ancestors seemed to adore.

Glass shattered downstairs and Chris tensed, immediately wishing he hadn't when he felt two pieces of a rib grate together. The black spots were back and his knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip on the wooden stand of the Book. He must have inadvertently squeezed Wyatt as well, because the child let out a pained yelp and began crying again, squirming to try and get out of Chris's arms and then crying when Chris wouldn't put him down.

The witch-whitelighter was jiggling Wyatt up and down again, trying to pacify his brother. "Oh, no, come on. Shush, shush, shush. You'll be okay. Look, Chris is sorry. Really sorry." Wyatt dropped his teddy to the floor with a thud, which only served to make him cry louder. The destruction downstairs stopped abruptly and Chris looked with wide eyes at the door, putting Wyatt on the floor next to his bear and going back to the Book, frantically turning pages. "Please, please, please… Grams? Anyone?"

The pages didn't turn and Chris cursed, slicing open his fingers with paper cuts in his haste. Wyatt was still crying on the floor, more out of abandonment this time, but Chris tuned him out. Hurry, hurry. He had to hurry… "Come on, Grams. You're not going deaf yet. You're, what, like, sixty? Way to young for deafness." Chris paused. Nothing. He bit his bottom lip and then rolled his eyes ceilingwards. "Grams… You know that you didn't look a day over forty-five last time I saw you, right?"

The pages flipped as if in a sudden breeze and Chris grinned, muttering his thanks under his breath and smoothed out the slightly-creased page the Book had stopped on. His brain was in no mood for speed-reading but he tried to cram the information into his brain anyway, scanning the text. There were footsteps on the stairs and then a small, tense moment of silence before something heavy crashed against the door, rattling it in its frame. Chris tried to read faster. It door rattled again and this time there was the sound of cracking to go with it. As much as he wanted to, Chris didn't look up, his lips moving as he read the words on the page.

Wyatt suddenly gave an extra-large wail and put up his shield. Chris, probably for his earlier treatment of his brother, was excluded from the blue bubble. When it extended, it knocked over the stand and sent the Book of Shadows flying across the room, closing it with a thud. Chris skidded on his knees towards the ancient tome just as the room was filled with a crack like a gunshot and the door split around the look, slamming against the attic wall and allowing Leo to spill into the room, followed by Kaden.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

Piper was getting desperate now, and it showed in her voice. Paige could hear the strain in it as she shook Phoebe's shoulders again, calling the middle sister's name. "Phoebe, come on, focus, dammit. We're gonna need the Power of Three, here."

Piper's voice was doing nothing for the headache that was worming its way through Paige's skull. She kept rubbing her forehead angrily, willing the ache from her brain, but nothing was happening. It came with a sudden stab and then eased off again and she huffed and paced, constantly pushing hair out of face irritably.

She had been sitting dejectedly on her mascara whilst Piper fruitlessly tried to blast her way through the force field surrounded them with miniscule orange explosions that sounded like firecrackers when she thought she had heard something behind her. She had turned to see nothing there but darkness and shadows and swirling dust, but still chills crept up and down her spine and she shivered, rubbing her arms and watching Piper's progress.

The Charmed One had been about to tell her sister that it was useless, and that she should save her energy for when it was needed when it had happened. Piper let out a scream and sent her next explosion wide, mainly scorching the floor a little. There was a demon behind her as if it had appeared out of nowhere, pinning her wrists behind her and coiling an arm around her neck in the blink of the eye. Where the demon's eyes should have been, all that was there were bloody sockets encrusted with dried blood, dark red holes leading to nowhere.

Piper had been calling for her help and Paige had been looking around frantically for something to use as a weapon when a demon of her own pounced and knocked her to the floor, where she was immediately choked and blinded by the dust. With startling speed for blinded demons, she had had her wrists pinned in the same manner as Piper's.

The demons had told them that, if they wished to see Phoebe alive again, they would not struggle, because they had other demon buddies who could easily kill Phoebe should they take it into their heads. So Piper and Paige had followed them dutifully — not that they had had much of a choice the way they were being handled — hoping to be reunited with Phoebe and have the Power of Three unbroken, so they at least had some kind of chance. When they set off, however, they didn't realise that it was going to be a trek that seemed like a mile-long hike. Paige guiltily noticed so much of her stuff shoved under here. Paintbrushes and pallets and a couple of (odd) shoes; mismatched socks and cardboard boxes whose contents she couldn't recall; batteries that had rolled underneath here to evade her and headphones to her old Walkman… The list went on. And on. She couldn't help but think that, if she'd actually cleaned under here, then this wouldn't have happened.

They had finally come to a halt in front of a seemingly towering object. Paige frowned at the cylindrical shape and, when she cocked her head, noticed the handle on the side. It was a mug. She'd bought a personalised mug with her name hand-painted on it on a whim, and it had ended up under here. She hadn't even known where it had got to. The letters had been in garish colours, she remembered, and the mug had been a light purple. It was upturned. Not that that was of particular importance, of course, because at the moment a dozen or so demons appeared from the gloom and grime, slipping silently into view from the shadows.

The demons quickly gathered around the handle of the mug and clung to it, their weight tilting the vessel towards them so that the gap between the rim and the floor yawned like a gaping mouth. When the handle of the mug was resting on the floor, Piper and Paige had been able to see a figure as small as them lying prone on the floor. Piper, recognising her sister at once, had managed to break free of the demon's hold on her and run across the floor, falling to her knees beside Phoebe.

Paige had warned her that it was a trap, but she was being manhandled towards the mug anyway, and all too soon she had been underneath it, looking up at the white bottom of the mug that was now a ceiling metres above her, before the demons clinging to the handle had let go, slamming the thick ceramic rim to the floor and imprisoning them.

The seemingly-thunderous sound of china hitting the floorboards was still ringing in Paige's head as she paced, chewing on a strand of her hair and trying to stop herself going crazy. It was okay. There was air. There were cracks beneath her that, if they were just a little wider, would have been perfect to slip through somehow. They weren't, however, but they were wide enough to be letting the air in. It was fine. She could breathe, and would be able to continue to breathe. So why was her heart racing so much? She kept looking around the slick, white walls of their prison, trying to work out what it was that the demons were keeping them here for, and what it had done to Phoebe, just because it was easier than panicking because she was in an enclosed space.

They had no eyes — a distinguishing feature (or should that be lack of feature?) — but that wasn't really much to go on. Many demons were blind. These ones had had their eyes seemingly gouged out, though. That was probably something to go on. They were small too — really small, just like they were at the moment, but were strong for their size, as she had found out from being pushed around by them.

So, she had a good list of what was with them. Great. Now, all she needed to do was get to the Book, and that was something that wasn't going to happen any time soon. She's probably be squashed between the pages like a bug for all eternity. The thing was basically a giant flower press to her. Paper-thin Paige, splattered all over an entry for every future Halliwell to see was not an attractive prospect. Her heart began to beat faster again. It seemed to be getting hotter inside the mug, from the state of her clammy palms at least. She sucked a deep breath in through her nose and let it out through her mouth, releasing the soggy red strand of hair from her mouth and letting it fall, now heavier than the rest of it. She then knelt down beside her sisters. "How's she doing?" she asked, looking at Piper.

The eldest Charmed One wrinkled her brow concernedly and sighed, lightly stroking Phoebe's hair and looking more than a little lost in thought. "I wish I knew, Paige. She just lies there. I can't get her to wake up… I mean, she's not _dead_, but…"

Paige snaked an arm around her sister's shoulders. "She'll be fine. They probably just hit her over the head or something. And you know how thick our sister's skull can be, right? Seriously, there will be, like, no harm done."

Piper gave a small snort of laughter and nodded. "Yeah. She's going to be fine. I know that, I just wish she would wake up so I could be sure."

Paige took her sister's hand, and placed her other hand on Phoebe's arm. "Come on. I'll orb us out of here. If we can get back to the edge, maybe we can figure another way out. Or, you know, scream enough to get the attentions of our sucky whitelighters."

No sooner had they broken up into an orb cloud were they catapulted back into the dust on the floor. Piper was thrown against the slick, white ceramic wall hard enough so that she actually dragged the cup a little way, and Phoebe hit the floor face first, still unmoving.

Paige groaned; she had somehow managed to land upside down. "Well, I guess they're really into their force fields, huh?" she muttered, righting herself huffily and pushing hair out of her face.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

Chris looked up, startled, a deer caught in the headlights. Leo looked a little stunned too — perhaps he hadn't expected the door to give so easily. Whatever. No time to care right now, Chris noted, slamming open the Book at around the halfway point, turning pages so that they were practically a blur. Wyatt's wailing reached a higher pitch, and Chris twisted his neck to look over his shoulder. They were both standing around Wyatt again. Chris flicked two fingers out and sent the playpen skidding across the floor. It knocked Kaden to the boards but sent Leo tumbling forward into it. The elder squirmed and landed on his side, the mesh walls of the pen bulging. Wyatt had stopped crying again, startled at what his father was doing, wondering, perhaps, if this was some kind of new game that was being played with him.

Chris looked around the room, his eyes alighting on a table lamp. He sent it flying at Kaden. The lamp stopped sharply in midair, jerking the shade from its position and letting it bounce on the floorboards. Chris opened his eyes wide. Kaden's palm was thrust towards him, the lamp actually edging its way back towards his head. _Kaden was using telekinesis! _How was this possible? Had the kid somehow drained his powers enough to be able to start using them?

Chris dropped his arm and ducked. The lamp flew over his head and shattered on the wall behind him. He resumed his looking in the Book of Shadows, hauling the tome up onto his knees and trying to remember whereabouts the page had been. Beginning? Middle? End? He let out a growl of frustration as a loud ripping sound announced Leo putting his foot through one side of the playpen. Kaden was coming towards him and, his mouth dry, he flipped ever in desperation until he felt the all-too-familiar tug of weakness at his heart. The Book slipped from his lap with loud clunk and he wobbled back and forth on his heels before finally falling face-first onto the carpet. The last thing he saw was two pairs of feet either side of his head before the unconsciousness that had been nagging at him all day finally consumed him.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

**_Right now, I am so unbelievably tired. Seriously. It's like… blah. I'm really, really sorry that this took so long to get out. It could have been finished a month ago, but my weekends got too stupidly full. I can't write in the week because I'm too busy. Firstly, I went out on one Saturday and was too tired on the Sunday, then I had problems with my Internet and spent the weekend on the phone with them. Then I did a sponsored walk, and now I have nothing to do I'm writing and grovelling for you all to still be nice to me even after I made you wait. Pleeeeeeeeeeease?_**

**Mizunderstood Writer: — Wallace? Hee. Okay. We'll find Wally and have a party together… Thanks for reviewing.**

**Claddagh Ring: — More of what Kaden's deal is here. It'll all be revealed later. Thank you for reviewing!**

**Chattypandagurl: — He might be. That would be telling. ;). Thank you!**

**DrewFullerFanLife: — Aren't all kids, though? Eh. Thank you!**

**Victorious Light: — HEH! No, I didn't end up flipping burgers for a living… yet. No, I'm still here. I didn't go to McDonald's level. Yet. There's time, trust me, there's time. Thank you for reading and thank you for reviewing!**

**Aldrea7: — Did you get another chapter of LTT? I think you might have done… I don't know. I'm tired… Oooh, a bug… Thank you, as well… The bug reminded me. It's blue.**

**Shoequeeny: — HEH! Love your username. Reminds me so much of my friend. She has a t-shirt saying something like that on. She's scarily shoe-crazy. Thank you for reviewing, sorry about the wait.**

**Altaira: — Thank you.**

**Mellaithwen: — Hee. Then you'll definitely like this chapter. More of it. My bed… It's got boxes under it and a giant Lord of the Rings poster that I was going to put up on the wall, but the frame was too heavy. Oh, and dust. Lots of dust, because it's so hard to get the vacuum cleaner under there.**

**hybrid88: — Heh. There is Phoebe! Voila! And other crazy foreign words to that effect! Thank you, you're really kind. I try my best.**

**Anon: — Yeah, the girls know. I just… Eh. Too lazy to do the timeline thing. Thank you for reviewing.**

**Whisper17: — _I'm _sorry it took so long for me to write! Heh. Thank you for reviewing — much appreciated. **

_**Still With the Eternal Gratitude,**_

_**Twisted Flame.**_


	6. Chapter 5

**_Short, short chapter, but a chapter nonetheless. Enjoy!_**

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Paige was leaning against the wall of the mug, her legs drawn up to her chest, hugging her knees. A strand of hair was in her mouth again, her teeth working on it absently. Piper was sitting next to her, her legs stretched out in front of her; both of them were lost in their separate thoughts. The only light came from a glow-in-the-dark, temporary tattoo that Paige didn't even remember buying, and the garish green light was making her feel ill. What was more, it was dimming with each passing minute, threatening to plunge them into complete blackness. The silence gaped. 

A small moan reached their ears and they snapped out of their collective trance. Phoebe was stirring. Excitement and hope jolted Paige's body awake and she was on her feet in a second, crossing the space between her and her sister quickly, intent on seeing any sign that Phoebe was okay and not suffering any kind of permanent brain damage.

"Is she okay?" Piper asked concernedly, only just managing to get to her feet. The ceramic behind her was slick and offered little to no help in her rising and she had nearly already fallen once. This was the third trimester for you — you had to love it.

Paige frowned, reaching out to gently shake her sister's shoulders. "I think so…" _I **hope** so. _She didn't want to tell Piper her fears, though. She was pretty sure that her sister had had it up to her eyes with the day so far and she saw no reason to worry her anymore than she already was.

Phoebe moaned again and turned her head first one way, then the other before opening her eyes halfway and peering at Paige through her lashes. "Paige? Oh, thank God. I was having this dream…" She sat up and rubbed her eyes, and then her forehead. "I'd been shrunk, and—" She caught Paige's look and sighed, wrinkling her nose. "Not a dream, huh?"

Both Piper and Paige had sagged in relief at the sound of her voice. It had been an unaired fear between them — that there was something critically wrong with Phoebe and that they could do nothing to help her. Having her awake and talking to them had been the best thing that had happened so far.

"Not a dream," Paige confirmed monotonously. She pulled a slightly guilty face. "We're… uh… under my bed."

"Um… okay…" Phoebe said slowly, her brain processing that piece of information. She brought her fingers to her aching temples and massaged them. "Why are we— Scrap that. Why am Ieven asking you to make sense of a supernatural predicament? That's their hallmark — they _don't_ make sense." She rubbed her eyes again, just as Piper crouched down next to her and began stroking her hair.

"I'm so glad you're okay," Piper said, giving her sister a half-hug. "We were really worried."

Phoebe grinned, clapping her hands together. "So, we're up to full Charmed power now?" she asked, suddenly bubbly. "Great! Let's whip out a vanquish on these demons' asses and get the hell out of here!"

"Well… There's kind of a problem with that," Piper admitted apologetically, biting her lip. She hated to burst Phoebe's bubble, especially when that bubble had caused such a sudden surge of enthusiasm that probably would have helped Phoebe come up with some kind of useful spell, but she didn't have a choice. The sooner Phoebe was brought up-to-date, the better.

"Yeah. We don't know anything about these demons. And I mean anything. Not even their favourite colour," Paige said, bummed. "We're totally in the dark here."

Piper cocked an eyebrow at her. "Favourite colour? Huh?"

Paige rolled her eyes exasperatedly and huffed a sigh. "It was just an example! Okay, yes, I agree that it was a _stupid_ example but it was an example nonetheless."

Piper smiled and reached over to half-hug Paige. "I knew what you meant, honey. Just teasing."

"Okay, if we can just go back to the situation in hand," Phoebe said. "Like— when did I lose my sandal?"

Piper cocked an eyebrow at her. "I'm sorry, what? _That's_ your issue in hand?"

"No," Phoebe said, rolling her eyes heavily and shaking her head. "I got sidetracked. Okay, issue in hand, issue in hand… Oh. Right. How the hell are we going to get out of here?"

"Oh, _that _issue in hand," Paige said. "We totally hadn't even thought about that one. Thanks for reminding us that we have to escape."

"Yeah, okay, Miss Sarcasm," Phoebe said. "Tell me, then, what's _your_ master plan for getting out of here? And preferably soon, because I have an interview with a radio DJ sometime for my column and if I miss it Elise is gonna explode harder than a volcano."

Paige grinned and stretched languidly. "My master plan totally rocks. Okay, here it is. We wait here for a while and rely on _my _totally super-smart nephew get us out of this mess." She grinned smugly. "He takes after me, you know."

The rim of the mug began grating across the gritty floor and the Charmed Ones looked around expectantly, getting automatically to their feet. Piper's fingers twitched and she raised her hands into an offensive position, just as someone half-stumbled, was half-dragged under the rim and pushed to the floor in a crumpled heap. Vague sounds of pain came from the tangled heap of limbs that was the new arrival.

Piper immediately blasted the offending demon, her power exploding on its chest throwing it backwards and out from underneath the mug. She raised her hands again and rushed forward, just as Paige dissolved into a cascade of bright blue lights that began streaking towards the gap between the floor and the mug rim. The ceramic slammed back down suddenly with a deafening boom and left them in the quiet again, just as Paige's orbing lights would have reached freedom. The Charmed One's orbs hit the side of the mug hard, reconstituted and hit the floor in a groaning pile.

The witch-whitelighter swiped a hand across her forehead and grimaced, trying to block out the strange ringing she felt in her ears. "Ow. Ow. That hurt. Ow. Sympathy, over here. Let it flow, I can handle it."

"So, that's _your _super-smart nephew, huh?" Phoebe caught a glimpse of Chris's green eyes from behind the curtain of brown hair that was obscuring his face and sighed inwardly. She was teasing Paige about it, but she had really thought that Chris was their last hope as well. Depression spread over her.

"Chris!" Piper asked, whirling around. She'd been so focussed on the demon that she hadn't even noticed her own son? With parenting skills like hers, it was no wonder Wyatt was the future of all evil. Depression seeped through her like a stain.

A pained mumble answered, "Yeah, right here." Chris heaved himself into a sitting position, his ribs burning like white-hot metal in his chest.

"Oh…" Piper began, walking over to him, sympathy written on her face. He was hurt… "Are you okay?" she asked, throwing her arms around him. He emitted a strangled yelp mixed with a whimper, and she immediately backed off. "What's wrong? What was that noise for?" She searched him up and down for any obvious injuries, but the dim light source was not made for the job.

"Nothing. It doesn't matter. I just had a… couple of problems with the whole demon situation," Chris said, hedging so he didn't have to give them the full details. He didn't want to have to tell them about Leo, or the fact that he had left Wyatt in serious danger, or the fact that he had brought Kaden, the start of all of this mess, into the house in the first place and he had been wrong to do so. He felt guilty enough as it was, without having to relive it and have his mother and aunts beat him up about it as well, because he totally had that covered.

"Join the club," Paige muttered wryly, getting up from the floor gingerly and stepping over the tattoo, throwing looming shadows around the circular walls of their prison. "You know, it's getting awfully crowded in here…"

"Yeah," Phoebe said, stepping up behind her, limping because the loss of one of her heels made one leg four inches shorter. "Let's hope that _your _super-smart brother-in-law can save us, huh?"

"Are you even gonna let that go?" Paige wondered, turning back to her. "Because, let me tell you, it's got _really _old already."

"Leo isn't gonna be doing much saving of anyone," Chris reported from the floor, shifting to a slightly-less painful position on the floor. "He's possessed. Or… under a spell. Or something. I don't know: I only had time to get the gist of these demons. I didn't do details or—"

Paige turned to him, her eyes glinting with triumph. "Wait, you know what the demons are? And how to kill them? So this is you… I don't know _coming to our rescue?_"She jabbed Phoebe in the ribs to emphasise her point and smirked at her half-sister. "So, really, that makes me what… Not wrong? Which is, oh, I don't know… _right?_"

Chris shrugged awkwardly and bit his lip. "Well… Kind of. I was… speed-reading. And being attacked. So it didn't go so well. I'm sorry…"

"It's okay, you did the best you could," Piper told him soothingly, rubbing his back. He yelped in pain again and tried to shuffle away from her touch, so she put her hands in her lap quickly. "I'm sorry, honey. How badly are you hurt, anyway?"

"It's nothing. I'm fine," Chris bit out mechanically, far to used to just telling people this because they expected him to be fine to even tell his own mother what was wrong with him. He lied as easily as he breathed. "I just got a little busted up."

Phoebe sighed heavily and finally gave in, bending and taking off her other sandal so she could walk on the same gradient. "Oh, great…" she said, fiddling with the buckle. "So you don't _really_ know anything useful that would help you in coming to our rescue?" She shot a grin up at Paige, and then began mocking her. "Which would make _me_, oh, I don't know… _right?"_

Paige scowled at her and poked out her tongue and Phoebe, satisfied, went back to trying to undo the stiff buckle on her shoe.

Chris glared at her tiredly, totally not in the mood for his aunt to be so dismissive and be in a war with his other aunt, but she was yanking her sandal off her foot and didn't notice. He knew that she was only saying what she said to win the argument with Paige, but it didn't stop her comments hurting. He had tried, dammit. The least she could do was see that. He turned reproachful eyes on her, but she still wasn't looking at him so he bit out irritably, "Yes, I do know something useful, as it happens. These demons… Okay. They feed through their eyes. They drain powers through their eyes."

"They don't _have _eyes," Paige pointed out, frowning. "Are you sure you have the right—" Chris had switched his glare over to her now and she closed her mouth, pursing her lips shut and held out her hands, palms towards him. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. Carry on."

"_But_," Chris continued, shooting a pointed glance at his aunt. "_But_, back in the seventeen hundreds a coven managed to blind and shrink their whole clan. They couldn't manage to do anything else. They were some of the most powerful demons at the time, because they could suck power, but they were reduced to nothing. Even new demons that were born of their kind were born blind and small, so they managed to perfect their other senses so much so that being blind really wasn't a problem to them."

"I thought you said you were speed-reading," Phoebe huffed, sitting back down on the floor. "This is a very long speed-read story."

"I was," Chris shot back. "The Book tends to waffle. That was me paraphrasing."

"Draining through their eyes? Is this something to do with Kaden?" Piper asked slowly, cocking her head. "Is he one of these demons?"

"Kaden?" Paige asked, narrowing her eyes in confusion. "Should… should I know who that is?"

"Innocent du jour," Piper quickly explained off-handily, waving a vague hand in her sister's direction. "He's a kid that Chris dragged home. He—"

"Hey, I object to the whole 'dragging' thing," Chris butted in with. "I did not _drag _him home, he just… I mean I… Okay, yeah, so I can't think of a better verb, but dragging is totally not it."

Piper just looked at him, before turning to her sisters. "All those in favour of dragging?" She raised her hands, as did her sisters. "Motion carried." She could almost feel Chris's eye roll and she smiled a little. "He's this kid that Chris dragged home. If he looks at you, his eyes turn… freaky and you get weak and feel… drained."

"So this Kaden kid is one of these demons? I thought you said that they were all born blind?" Paige asked, her already-shaky grasp of the situation slipping.

Chris nodded at his aunt's question. "They are. These demons could not only drain people through their eyes, but posses them as well. Somehow, I think that they've learnt how to get their control of possession back even without their eyes. Three hundred years of studying seems to have smartened them right up. Lucky us. But they could only possess beings other than witches or demons, that was the thing. They drained witches and use the power that they gained to possess people to boost their numbers, usually killing the witch, and, when that being gets enough power, he would… turn into a demon."

"So… When Kaden gains enough power he'll… go fully demonic on us?" Piper asked. "But he's just a kid. That's not fair…" If that happened, they'd have to vanquish him. A seven-year-old for God's sake. That wasn't right; that wasn't what the Charmed Ones stood for.

Paige reached out and rubbed her sister's shoulder comfortingly. "They're demons, honey. That's the way they work." She shrugged sadly. "All we can do is vanquish these demons before it happens."

"There's something else. Kaden, he… isn't being born," Chris continued with. "Kaden is being _made _a demon. Which means—"

"—eyes. He'll have eyes." Realisation hit Piper. "And, when Kaden's a demon, he can possess more people to drain powers, who will possess more people… Oh, God… They'll be loads of them. How are we meant to stop innocents turned demons? They're… They're rebuilding the whole clan, starting with Kaden."

Chris bit his lip and looked down at his shoes in both sadness and guilt. "And Leo."

His mother and aunts turned to look at him in shock.

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_**Psst… I think I got away with not posting for months on end… Yeah. They've not noticed. Everything's just fine…**_

_**One word: Oops.**_

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**_Oh, and another. SORRY!_**


	7. Chapter 6

**Short chapter again. I was going to go on for a while longer, but I didn't have the inspiration and was just going to leave it, but then I thought that shorter chapters mean more frequent chapters, so I cut it off at the end of this chapter and posted it. Thanks to all those who reviewed anonymously, I daren't mention too much about you here for fear of wrath, but thank you and maybe log in next time if you can so I can thank you personally? Enjoy. **

_Twisted Flame._

* * *

The devastation written on Piper's face crushed Chris more than anything else that had happened that day. Not for the first time since he had been in the past he found himself observing the special bond that his parents seemed to have and wondering when it had all gone wrong for them. He hated to see his mother look like that and guilt surged through his body, knowing that he was the majority of the reason that Leo had gone on his demonic rampage. If he had somehow been able to keep his father a whitelighter, then none of this would have happened.

"Leo's gonna be a demon?" the oldest Charmed One asked in a tiny voice. She hugged herself, rubbing up and down her arms. If Leo became a demon, then they would do everything in their power to save him but, if it came to it… Could she vanquish her sort-of-ex-husband? She didn't think she had it in her, and she didn't think that her sisters would either. Not after everything he had been through with them.

"No, he's not," Phoebe soothed, hugging Piper. "He's not gonna be a demon, sweetie. We won't let him."

"Yeah and, besides, he has to gather enough power first, right? Which means finding some other witches to suck the powers out of." Paige shrugged, smiling. "And, if this Kaden kid couldn't manage to go fully demonic after sucking both you _and _Chris, then it's gonna be a while before they find another witch powerful enough too— Wait…"

"Yeah," Chris mumbled, tracing a pattern in the dust on the floor and determinedly not looking at his family. He felt enough shame at his failing to protect Wyatt already, without them heaping it on him as well. "Wyatt."

Phoebe threw her hands up in the air and rubbed at her forehead with her fingertips. "Oh, God. That's it, then. Right? We're screwed, aren't we?"

"Well, with _that _attitude…" Paige said, looking her sister up and down. "No. We need to stay upbeat. Stay focussed. Ideas?"

But Piper was rapidly falling to pieces and shrinking back into herself at the thought of the double blow of losing her son and her husband, and Chris had distanced himself from them out of shame and guilt. Phoebe just believed that they were screwed, so she wasn't going to find any help there. Throwing her own hands up in the air, the witch-whitelighter huffed indignantly and strode over to her nephew, grabbing his arm and pinching it hard.

"Ow! Hey! Ow!" the brunette yelped, slapping his hand over his aunt's pinch. "What was that for? Ow!"

Paige rolled her eyes and started dragging him up from the floor. "Quit being such a baby. We need everyone's brains firing on all cylinders. Yes, you screwed up with protecting Wyatt, but it wasn't your fault. You did everything you could. And, right now, he is in danger and, if we don't come up with something fast, we have no way to help him. Got it?"

Chris nodded, though still rubbing his arm and pouting at her. "Yeah…"

Paige walked over to Piper and shook her shoulders, not entirely sure that her sister was above detonating her ass if she pinched her. "The same goes for you. You're not gonna be able to help Leo and Wyatt unless you snap out of it and _think_, okay?"

Piper looked momentarily shocked and blinked at her sister as if she wasn't there for a few seconds before nodding assertively. "Yes. You're right. I'm sorry. Now is not the time to panic." She exhaled, shook out her shoulders and tried to kick start her brain again. "So… Plan?"

Paige stepped backwards, holding out her hands. "See, my contribution was the motivation. I was kind of thinking about leaving the actual plan part up to you."

"Can we tip the mug over?" Chris asked, pushing on the wall. It didn't give until he slammed his entire weight into it, and even then it only grated a millimetre or two across the floor and stopped moving.

Paige shook her head. "Not unless we can somehow get to the top of the mug and push there, and none of us seem to be in cheerleader, human pyramid mode, so, sorry. No."

"Then we're gonna have to tip it up from the bottom…" Chris mused, frowning at the rim of the mug. "We need a lever. Something to topple it over that way."

"A lever?" asked Phoebe sceptically. "Huh. Darn. The day I leave my crowbar in my _other _dress…"

"Not helping," Piper bit out, annoyed at her sister's lack of engagement and her flippancy.

Paige's eyes suddenly gleamed, shining brightly with the idea formulating in her mind. She grabbed the edge of the tattoo and began pulling it, straining to move it. "Help… me," she grunted, nearly losing possession on the floor and falling over.

Phoebe grabbed the tattoo as well and helped to pull. "Why? This isn't a particularly good lever, Paige…"

Paige tried to reply, but just gasped with the exertion. It was a freaking slip of transfer paper. Why was it so heavy? Finally, they managed to drag it to the end of the mug and set it down, and Paige walked back into the mug's centre, grinning and pointing down at the floor. "There's our lever." The looks she caught from Chris and Piper told her that they thought that she was insane, and she didn't even want to think about the look that Phoebe was throwing at her so she stamped an impatient foot. "The floorboards are nailed down! With nails!"

Piper caught on immediately and blasted the rug covering the floor. Acrid smoke billowed into the air around them as the rug smouldered, opening up a red-and-orange-rimmed hole in the carpet and exposing the floorboards beneath.

The smoke tickled her throat, and the witch-whitelighter gave a small cough before demanding, "Nail!" Orbs rose around the head of the nail, but it didn't shift. "Nail!" Once again, orbs sparkled, but it was too tightly embedded for her smaller power to move. She shook out her shoulder and rotated her head, popping her neck. "NAIL!"

There was a small grinding noise and the head of the nail rose up from the floor slightly. Piper was working on stamping out the burning rug, her sleeve clamped over her mouth and nose. Her vision was almost completely obscured by her streaming eyes, and her lungs felt as if she were breathing in the fire and not just the smoke. Chris, Paige and Phoebe were coughing as well, choking on the very air. Sweat beaded her forehead, threatening to run down her face.

"NAIL!" Paige called again, her voice strained. The nail didn't move again. She was rapidly tiring herself out, and she knew it, but this nail was what their whole plan rested on. She had to get this free of the floor so they could tip the mug over. Grimacing, she took a deep breath to call for it again but she got a lungful of smoke that scalded her voice box, and she dissolved into a coughing fit. Okay, so, admittedly, Piper blowing a hole in the rug had not been her best plan ever, considering that it seemed likely that it was about to kill them, but they had had to expose the floorboard and the nails beneath.

Chris had his hands out in front of him, palms raised to the ceiling, tendons standing out on the side of his neck with the strain of what he was doing. His face was red with the effort and he was breathing in short, desperate gasps with through his nose. The nail shifted another half a centimetre out of the floor and he dropped his hands, exhausted and a little dizzy.

Piper suddenly turned, whipping out her hands in the direction of the nail and shaving splinters out of the floorboards at its base. If she could just manage to blast the boards away… The nail was now looser in its moorings and she unleashed the power again even as the smoke threatened to overwhelm her. Once more and Paige might be able to move it with Chris's help. She had to try. She had to try, or she was going to die in here. They were _all _going do die in her. Sliding down the ceramic wall behind her she concentrated and blew up another small chunk of the wood. That was it. That was all she could give them.

"Nail!" Paige cried again, desperate for it to budge. Orbs shone and rattled the nail around in its hole and her eyes brightened with hope. "Nail!" It rose out of the floor some more. "C'mon… Nail!" It was dragged up from the floor, she could even see its point, but then she couldn't hold it anymore. Her legs collapsed underneath her like jelly and the nail fell back into its hole.

Chris, seeing his aunt fall, caught the nail with his mind. It was free now. He just had to lift it out of the hole… Grimacing, he focussed and the nail began to slowly rise out of its hole, millimetre by painful millimetre. Sweat dripped in his eyes, and he took another mouthful of fumes and nearly dropped it. He was muttering curse words under his breath, a string of obscenities spilling from his lips so fast that they were a blur even to his ears. With a metallic clatter, the nail fell to the floorboards and he grinned a shaky, triumphant grin before crawling towards it.

The thing was even bent with the uneven force that it had been driven into the joist below the board. It was what had made it such a bitch to get out, but it was what was going to save their lives. It was the perfect lever. If he could just get to it and jam it under the rim of the mug…

Phoebe was there before him, her hands on the shaft of the nail, pushing it but making no leeway. He grabbed the cold metal and began pulling, and it started to shift across the burning floor. Paige lunged for the nail out of the eerily green-tinged smoke and latched onto it, throwing her weight against it. She looked up at the head of the nail towering above her and set her face determinedly. It began to slide faster and Chris pulled as hard as he could until, eventually, the point was jammed between the floorboards and the rim of the mug. A tiny chink of what lay beyond the mug beckoned to him, a sweet, teasing wisp of fresh air blowing in.

Running around to his aunts, Chris grabbed the nail and began pulling backwards, as did Phoebe and Paige. Shakily, the mug began to tilt, and the gap widened. Throwing his whole weight into it, practically swinging from the nail, he grunted, "Go and get mom and get out of here. I'll hold this thing…"

"You can't," Paige told him. "Phoebe can go and get Piper. I'm holding this thing open with you."

Exasperated, he glared at his aunt but saw that she was not going to accept an argument. Phoebe scurried back to where Piper lay and hooked her hands under her sister's armpits, dragging her across the floor to the clean air.

All of Chris's muscles were shaking with the effort, and the pain in his ribs was practically blinding him. He ignored it, acknowledging that his tank was running on fumes. He couldn't give in now. He had to hold this open so he could at least get his mother out…

Phoebe finally pulled Piper clear and Chris let out a shaky sigh of relief and turned to Paige. "I think you're next."

"I'm not leaving you here," Paige bit back, her voice as strained with effort as his was. "We'll go together."

"We can't. The mug will fall."

"Can you hold it up?"

Chris grimaced at the question, wishing she hadn't asked it. He could try to hold it up, but there was no guarantee. He could barely hold his head up anymore. His breathing was rasping in his chest and, more alarmingly, bubbling slightly as well. He didn't know how much longer he could stay conscious for, so he just nodded.

"On three. One, two… THREE!"

They let go of the nail and the mug began rapidly descending. Chris threw out an arm and caught it with his power. It was shaking just as much as he was, juddering, and it suddenly slipped, practically touching the floor. Straining, he motioned for his aunt to go. She crawled underneath on her stomach and then reached back for him, beckoning frantically. He led down to crawl underneath, but the mug dropped again, leaving a gap that he couldn't squeeze under. He was exhausted. His vision was dimming and his eyes were slowly closing.

In a flash, he saw adult Wyatt standing over him, regarding him with a sneer. He had been in a situation so much like this before, and Wyatt had been smirking at him, triumphant because he had this brother back. Battered and bruised into submission, but he had Chris back on his side.

Chris knew that he didn't ever want to feel that way again.

His eyes snapped open and he flung out an arm, rising the cup off the floor so that he could walk out underneath it with his head ducked. On the other side, he finally collapsed onto the floor and the mug crashed back down behind him. He took his gulps of the clean air, savouring being able to breathe.

"Now what?" he heard Phoebe hiss. "We can't orb out, right, or you would have done it already. How are we gonna get out of here?"

Chris looked around, and then looked up. "The mattress. We can get out through the mattress."

"Huh?"

"Mom can blow a hole in the mattress cover. We should be able to orb up there with the springs, blow another hole in the top and get the hell out of here. It'll be like… bypassing the force field. I think."

"Mom can do that," Piper confirmed. Her face was streaky, sweat having run down through the black soot on her skin, leaving pale tracks. Her lips were pressed into a thin line and she was wobbling slightly back and forth, as if she was on a boat, but she was up, and that was the main thing to all of them. Chris rushed forward and caught her elbow as the moved a little too violently, but she slapped his hands off. "Don't mother me. It's all… wrong."

Chris stepped back, still holding out his hands to snatch her from the air if she began to fall, but apologised. "Sorry."

"Better," Piper nodded, sucking in a deep breath and letting it out, seeming to somehow press her lips even tighter than before. She nodded again and looked up at the 'ceiling' miles above her and let the breath out, flicking out her hands and smiling tightly when the fabric of the mattress disintegrated into ash.

"Uh… guys?" Paige said, her voice tense. "We got company. Let's go."

Piper whipped around and saw demons running at them from every direction. "This better work," she said quickly, grabbing Chris's arm. Her sisters dissolved into orbs a split second before they did and her vision was gradually obscured by the orbs until she wasn't standing anymore.

"They're going to be following," Phoebe informed them in a whisper, looking down through the hole and seeing nothing but darkness that made her uneasy.

Around her, silver metal springs gleamed dully, towering and spiralling above her head. She was walking on the oddly springy cushioning of the mattress beneath her and the springs spread in every direction,as crazy as Shakespeare's wood near Athens only metallic and futuristic.

"On it," Piper rapped back at her sister, flicking her wrists and blowing a hole in the topside of the mattress and the sheet on it. "Let's go. Come on." She grabbed Chris's arm again and they dissolved into orbs just as the first signs of shimmering began to appear around them.


	8. Chapter 7

"Oh! Oh! We're big again!" Phoebe's gleeful shouts filled the room and the middle sister grinned, bouncing up and down on the mattress. She looked around the room, revelling in being bigger than the majority of her furniture.

"Yeah, you're big again. Hey, even the arm that belongs to me that you're currently jumping on knows it," Chris snarked, wrenching his arm free from beneath his aunt.

"If we're griping," Paige put it, "then you also have your foot in my ear, Chris."

"Well, I might be able to move my legs if my mother would _get off _them," Chris snapped, both at Paige and Piper, struggling to claw himself free. When they'd been small, what felt like miles between each other had definitely shrunk to mere millimetres when they'd grown suddenly and had left them with just a tangle of bodies on Paige's bed.

"We don't have time for this," Piper said briskly, finally extracting herself from the rest of her family with the aid of the headboard. "We've got to get upstairs to the Book of Shadows and get the vanquish before—" Piper was cut off by a sudden wave of familiar nausea. She clutched at her head, reeling backwards so much that she nearly fell off the other side of the bed.

"Too late," Chris said grimly. Leo and Kaden had appeared in the doorway. Comfortingly for the exhausted witch-whitelighter, neither of their eyes were glowing the green that mirrored his own eyes. He wasn't entirely sure how much more essence/power sucking he could take for a day. "Hold on." Reaching out, he felt Phoebe grab his arm. He looked around. Paige's eyes were rolled back inside her head, and her breath was coming in slow, deep pants. Piper's knuckles were white on the headboard as she struggled to hold herself up. Knowing that it would be mere seconds before the draining power started affecting his foetus he grabbed his mother's sleeve just as Phoebe took Paige's hand and orbed the entire group into the attic.

Phoebe immediately crossed the room to look in the Book of Shadows. She picked it up from the floor where it had been left after Chris had been captured and began frantically looking through it, nearly tearing more than one page. Suddenly, the parchment sprang to life and began flipping on its own, a blur of information until it stopped at the page they needed. Phoebe's eyes shot over the text, reading faster than they ever had in their life. Her lips moved quickly as she recited the vanquishing spell under her breath over and over, committing it to memory.

"It's Power of Three, right?" Chris panted. He felt sick. He wanted to just curl up and sleep for a year. Or just die. He couldn't decide which would be the better option right now.

"Yeah," Phoebe said breathlessly, still reading the spell to herself.

"How are we going to get to the demons?" Paige asked, recovering enough to stand. "I mean, they're shrunk and under the bed. Are we gonna have to shrink ourselves again?"

"No way," Phoebe said immediately, glancing up at her half-sister. "I only just got back to normal size. That is not going to happen."

"Can you think of a better idea?" There were footfalls on the stairs and Paige spun, looking fearfully at the doorway.

"Move the bed?" Chris suggested. "Expose them then do it?"

"It's worth a shot," Piper said. "Paige, let's get down there. Phoebe, have you got the spell?"

The middle sister only nodded affirmatively, the words buzzing around inside of her skull. This needed to be over. This needed to be over now.

"Let's do this thing," Paige said, orbing them from the room.

As they reappeared in the bedroom, Paige immediately gestured at the bed, encasing it in a cloud of orbs and whisking it to the other side of the room almost carelessly, knocking into her dressing table and overturning her mirror and everything on it. In the dust and debris that the bed no longer hid, they could see a flurry of scurrying movements. Piper flicked her wrists, freezing them melee.

"_Demons punished long ago,  
__This spell will stop you causing woe.  
__With these words and with our cries  
__We blind forever, your draining eyes."_

Piper and Paige picked up the chant, slipping their hands into Phoebe's as they did so. Their voices rose in pitch until demons started going up like miniature fireworks all over the carpet, sent down to the Wasteland in a pillar of flames. When they were finally all gone, a collective sigh of relief shuddered through the room, the sudden silence seeming deafening.

The wind blew in through the open window, gently fanning them with cool air and blowing the curtain into the room. It was the last thing Chris felt before dropping to the carpet completely unconscious.

_**Don't Look Under the Bed**_

The drone of the vacuum cleaner completely blocked any sound of Chris entering the room so that, when Paige glanced up for a second and saw he nephew, she screamed and jumped. Calming down, the Charmed One glared at him before punching the 'Off' button and straightening up, locking the machine back into upright position.

"Are you feeling better now?" she asked.

Chris smiled, leaning against the doorframe. "Oddly, now my various wounds are healed, yeah. What are you doing?"

"Cleaning," Paige duhed, pulling a face. "What's the matter? Never seen your aunt clean?"

"Do you want a truthful answer?"

Mock-outraged, she snatched up the duster from her nightstand and threw it at him. There were two bin liners by the door. One she was filling up with any piece of rubbish that she could fine in the room. The other was for stuff that she was going to drop off at Goodwill tomorrow. After the entire day's incident had been sparked by her lack of tidiness, she had made a resolution to clean and declutter — especially under her bed — as often as possible. Now, she was vacuuming the rug where her bed at been, ensnaring dust bunnies in the Hoover determinedly.

"We sent Kaden home."

"He's got a home?"

Chris sighed, his face falling. "His mom was a witch. The demons got to her and killed her for her powers. He's still got his mortal father, though. That, and he doesn't seem to have any witchy blood in him, otherwise the demons wouldn't have been able to possess him, so that makes everything a lot easier too, in a way. His dad had been at work and he'd come home to an empty house and a dead wife. He was distraught and panicked. You should have seen his face when he found that his son was alive and well."

"Speaking of sons… How are things between you and Leo?"

Chris twisted his mouth into a grimace. He should have known that Paige would go straight for the million dollar, killer question. That was just her nature. "Strained," he said simply. "But that's no fault of his, I guess. He's trying. It's my fault. It's just kind of hard. I'd just about started to deal with him and suddenly he's beaten me into a coma. It's not my idea of father-son bonding."

"You'd rather have gone fishing?" Paige asked with a smirk. Her bed was still where she had orbed it and she sat down on the edge of it.

"God no," Chris said immediately. "Ugh. Fishing? No… Not fishing. Something with a little more action than _that _marvellous endeavour. However, I would have preferred it to be something with a little less action than tossing me into a wall and trying to kill me…"

"Those things are so interlinked I'm not sure there's a balanced middle-ground," Paige said, unable to suppress the smile that gave away the fact that she was joking.

"Do you need a hand?"

Paige groaned, flopping backwards onto her bed. "I'd nearly forgotten. No, I don't need a hand. I need to curl up and _sleep_, that's what I need."

"Well, there _is _a way that's a lot faster than the mortal way…" Chris said slowly.

His aunt took the bait immediately. "You know, if I'm cleaning and don't sleep, there will be innocents lost, right? I mean, if I can't focus then someone's gonna die…"

"Right. So you wouldn't be doing it for _yourself_, per se, you'd be doing it for the good of the worldas a whole. So, when you look at it _that _way you can't risk _not _doing the spell, right?"

"Oooh, I like it." She paused, sitting up and cocking an eyebrow at him. "You are far too good at finding loopholes like this, mister," she said, trying her hardest to hit 'stern'. "Just how often _do_ you abuse the personal gain rule in the future?"

"Oooh, future consequences… I don't know if I can tell you that…"

"What consequences?" Paige asked, pulling a face.

"The consequence of my mother grounding me _from birth_," Chris said, moving forwards into the room. "And that is not a joke. I have absolute faith in her power to do it."

"Yeah, me too. So…"

"So you won't tell her if I won't?" Chris guessed, breaking into a grin identical to the one on Paige's face.

"We are _so _bad, aren't we?"

"What rebels we are," Chris agreed. "I call dibs on the second and fourth lines, by the way."

"Why?"

"Because, if I don't say the first line, I didn't initiate it and the smiting will not fall upon me."

Paige cocked an eyebrow at him. "Sneaky, sneaky. You've forgotten, though, about the smiting that _will _fall upon you should Piper find out…"

"Blackmail?" Chris asked. "That's low."

Paige cocked her head. "I'm not sure — Did you expect anything less from your _favourite_ aunt?"

Chris grinned. "Fine. Together or not at all."

"In it to the end," Paige agreed.

"_Let the object of objection,  
__Become but a dream,  
__As I cause the seen,  
__To be unseen."_

Swirling white lights drifted through the room languidly, gently sweeping away the dirt and mess. Paige shrieked slightly as a carpet of them swept the bed back into its old place and set it down. The orbs convalesced into one in the centre of the ceiling before bursting outwards in a glimmering display of brilliance and showering to the floor, slowly fading from view leaving an immaculate bedroom behind them.

* * *

_Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad breathe. There we go. We're done here now. Big thanks to anyone and everyone that reviewed. As always, your comments mean a lot to me._

I hope that you all enjoyed reading this as much as I enoyed writing it, because that was what I aimed for and, if I achieved it, woot!

Thank you ALL!

****

Twisted Flame


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